From: pl159410@academ01.mty.itesm.mx (Alejandro Garza Gonzalez)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Can Amiga do my project?
Date: 27 Jul 92 16:56:36 GMT

dudley@cebaf9.cebaf.gov (John Dudley) writes:

>|> I'm investigating a project of using a computer to put messages onto a TV
>|> monitor.  We have Macs, and we can buy extra equipment that will let us do
(...)
>|> Here's what we want to do:
>|>       1)  Have one or more TV/Monitors on walls around the building
>|>       2)  Create a continuously running series of messages that are
>|>           easy to create on a computer
>|>       3)  The messages must look good and be easy to read
>|>       4)  The message base must be easy to update - probably on a
>|>           daily basis.
>|>       5)  Nothing fancy is required.  No real-time video - just colored
>|>           backgrounds, maybe a simple image, and nice fonts.
(...)
>|> So, what's the minimum system I would need to do this with an Amiga?
(...)

At the ITESM campus here at Monterrey, Mexico, we have something quite like the system you describe, altho at a larger scale. Our equipment consists of:

     1 Amiga A1000 with 8MB for constant broadcast 
     1 Amiga 2000 w/HD for production (25Mhz/100MB HD/8MB)
     1 Amiga 3000 for production (6MB/ 105MB HD)
     1 Amiga A1000 for backup (w/20MB HD and 2MB)
       
  software: DeluxePaintIV, ArtDepartment Pro, Imagine, DigiPaint
  misc. hardware: JX100 scanner, Digi-View, CD player

We have connect the A1000's Video Out to an NTSC encoder which broadcasts to the entire campus thru a closed circuit TV channel. The CD player (a 5-disc carrousel) plays music with the broadcast graphics. Since we broadcast 24 hrs a day, we must be able to leave the broadcasting computer unattended until we want to update any graphics/messages. We prepare all the animations and graphics on the other machines, put them on floppies and load them onto the A1000 when 
we are ready to update (and while we load the new graphics on the broadcasting A1000, we put on a Killer Demo on the other A1000 and broadcast that :))

We have all that HD space and speed 'cause of the 3D rendering we do, and to hold all of the animations on them. If you plan to just do 'nice backgrounds and fonts' all you need is a large enough font collection, and software to do the backgrounds on. A scanner helps also, if you want to digitize logos, photos, 
etc.

On the A1000 we run AmigaVision, which loads all the animations and graphics onto RAM and then play them from there. If your animations are small enough, you could get by with a couple of floppy drives attached to your broadcasting 
computer.
   
>|> James W. Harris, Memphis State University, Education - 200, Memphis,
>|> TN  38152
>|> 901-678-4632                                      
>|> harrisjw@memstvx1.memst.edu

>Without a doubt you could do this EASILY on the Amiga. All that would be
>required is a single Amiga 500

I think you should at least require 2 amigas, one that would transmit, and another that would produce all the graphics and messages. If you only wanted to transmit at certain times a day, you could get by wih only one computer using it to make more graphics/animations when you are not broadcasting to the monitors.

>The Amiga 500 comes with a little adapter that gives you RF signals or
>straight NTSC.

You could use the A500's RF adapter, but its quality is not very good. To get better quality, you could consider buying a genlock (around $300) and then a high-quality RF encoder. But, considering the application, you can get by fine with the aforementioned RF adapter. Note: if you have an RF signal (the kind you connect into the VHF ANTENNA plug in your TV set) you might want to get an RF amplifier/distributor if you plan on having monitors far away from the source computer (see any Radio Shack catalog)

> In addition to the Amiga, you would probably want a full meg of RAM,
>and possibly a harddrive or external floppy.  

Possibly even more RAM (on the broadcasting machine) if all of your graphics dont fit onto all of your floppy drives (And believe me, you dont want to swap
floppies all day long :)) An HD would probably not be a good idea, as it would be in constant use and probably fail from all that constant use. I recommend loading all you can onto RAM (as we do).

>As far as software goes, there are some programs in
>public domain that do what you
>need, or you could jazz it up with a program like Scala or
>AmigaVision.(not too expensive [<$150?]).

I recommend AmigaVision, as it allows for programmed events, like anouncing
something until a certain date (im not sure if the others can do this.) For doing nice background, u could use DPaintIV, and also there are lots of nice fractal-geberation programs in the public domain, whose graphics make nice backgrounds. Just pop them into DPaintIV, add some fonts and bua-lah :)

> Multitasking would allow you to update the messages with no
>interruption to what's displayed on the TV's.

How would you go around to doing this?? If you update a Scala or amigavision script, you would have to stop the presentation, reload the script, and start
the presentation again. 

> All and all, a system could be put together for  under $1000 (including
>harddrive). There's a channel 
>displayed in our local shopping mall's food court that I discovered used
>an Amiga 500 (They showed the
>system clock at one point).

My price estimate:
 
 2 A500s -  $1000
 Software- around $300
 2 Floppy drives- $120
 1 RF modulator- $50
 1 RF distributor system- (Radio Shack has these) $??? (I'd say around $70)
 2 2MB expansion cards- $400
 1 CD Player $120 (<- hey, you dont want 'em sleeping while you show 'em!)

so, you would be looking at about $2000 worth of equipment (more or less). If you want to get fancy, get an A3000 instead of the second A500 and get some Ray-Tracing software to blow their socks off :) (But that'd set you back about another $1000-$1500)

OOPS! Forgot about computer monitors! (2- ADD $500 -- altho you can probably get by with only one, as you can use a TV set to monitor what the other monitors will be seeing)

>         //  John C. Dudley
>      \\//   Vertex Laboratories, Newport News, Va.
>       \/    Amiga! The Computer for the Creative Mind!

Hope to have helped!
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