From: dave@prim.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer,comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: More on ND compression (followup survey)
Date: 13 Apr 92 03:32:36 GMT
Organization: Primitive Software Ltd.

In article <1992Apr11.220231.10261@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> smb3u@kiptron.psyc.virginia.edu (Steven M. Boker) writes:
> [deleted]
>Here are the numbers as far as I can see.  512x650x24x30 bits per second
>need to be sent to the video.  Thats just under 30Mbytes/second.  I would
>hate to have to rely on more than .25Mbytes/second sustained transfer
>from my hard disk, although twice that is possible under ideal conditions.
>Thus 120/1 compression ratio would be good and 60/1 compression might
>just barely work under ideal conditions.
>
>People have worked these numbers out many times before.  In fact I've
>heard them from NeXT people when the dimension was first announced.
>I thought that this was what we were promised when we placed our order
>for the Dimension card in the first place.  Is there some sort of
>collective amnesia happening here?
>

Unfortunately yes. I don't know why people are going down on their knees and begging
NeXT to finish the ND board - they PROMISED us real time compression and they should
deliver on that promise. Especially now that the hardware problems have been fixed.

Remember when NeXT announced the ND board? That was when I decided to buy a cube. 
As soon as the ND board came out I was going to upgrade and write an app to do video 
editing. It never happened.

Anyway, just to refresh our memories, here is a report that Charles Perkins posted here
back in the heady days of Sept 90:


>   For me, the day begin at 5:15am setting up a breakfast we were hosting to
>"watch the dawn on a new era in computing."  From about 6 to 8am, about 50 NeXT
>employees and enthusiasts came to watch the sun rise from the roof garden, and
>then I was off to Davies Symphony Hall for the Event.

> [deleted]

>   Then came the section that brought the house down...Steve was looking at
>a door in B&W in the bitmap editor, and he pressed what looked like a large
>CD play button...the door was a frame from the Wizard of Oz just as Dorothy is
>about to enter Oz, and as we watched, it came to life and played full-motion
>color video in full-CD sound in real-time in the window.  The Wizard of Oz ran
>and ran as people clapped and clapped.  The damn NeXTdimension has real-time
>display of video on the screen, built-in JPEG compression in a VLSI chip that
>performs up to 100-to-1 reduction on the fly for I and O, it has two RCA video
>inputs (with an S-video slaved to one of them), and an RCA video output with
>S-video as well.  Also RGB output.  Also any color monitor can be used for
>output.  Also, here's the price:
>
>		===>   $ 3995    <===
>
>When Steve announced that and then took a live video feed of himself, showed us
>it updating in real-time, captured a frame into the editor, and then composited
>in Donald Duck sitting on his hand, all in a few seconds, the crowd went wild.
>This was a moment of Myth.  All of the hardware and software ideas of that
>momentous 1968 demo by Doug Engelbart were finally becoming available on an
>afforable platform, and we could feel the world changing around us.  It was
>a feeling I won't soon forget.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   Well, as you can tell from my reaction above, I am buying a NeXTdimension
>board and color monitor as soon as my budget allows.  [rest deleted].

Phew! Those were the days...

Dave Griffiths