Talk:Video Toaster

message: I am adding a picture of a Screamer (front panel only), one of allegedly 7 made, in the possession of designer Brad Carvey. I will try to source a photo of the various Toaster models and maybe screengrabs. I don't believe the bit about George Lee and "The Toaster Microwave" has any validity in this article, and I can find no citation of it anywhere. I propose its removal. I could provide a lot of additional info about the Toaster but it would all be "original research" unless someone interviews Brad in a credible publication. XenonofArcticus (talk) 17:44, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: General Updates

message: Are you sure about the delay in the first version of the toaster? A delay of 100-200 ms would have required you to store somewhere around 10 fields or 5 frames. That would have been _extremely_ expensive back then.
--132.199.230.178 17:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To whit, about 5mb of high speed random access memory... even high end PC video cards capable of TV-standard output didn't commonly break 4mb for a few more years. Mind you, it might still have been cost effective compared to the professional studio equipment equivalents i'd imagine as even more exhorbitant! (and not entirely worth it if you're only after making a title screen and putting a few name subtitles on anchors, reporters and guests for your local news reports, regardless of it's more famous use on e.g. Babylon 5) 82.46.180.56 (talk) 00:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, the Toaster was far from inexpensive on first release. $1999, if memory serves me correctly.  And that was in addition to the cost of an Amiga 2000HD/2500 to host it. A check of the high-res pictures on the Big Book of Amiga Hardware site shows that the RAM daughterboard had 16 AAA1M200P-10H ICs for the frambuffer and the original specs for the Toaster show it to be capable of capturing 8 fields in real-time at 24-bit color resolution.  There was a delay in in the framebuffer and I remember having to calibrate it on particularly troublesome units in the mid to late 90's after Newtek got tired of requiring owners to send them in for service and started allowing us to do it.  And yes, using the CG was slow and tiresome but it was still an order of magnitude cheaper than any available real-time solutions available then.--SEWalk (talk) 07:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delay 

message: This entry needs more info about a typical Toaster setup.  There's no mention that a user still required two or more video tape units to perform edits.  The entry does not make it clear that the Toast was *not* an NLE. --24.249.108.133 23:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More clarity needed 

message: Though it was admittedly one of the better graphically specified computers of the 80s (and particularly in terms of bang-for-buck), I can't see much justification in the Amiga being "unique amongst personal computers in it's ability to run at NTSC TV frequency (15.75khz)"... unique but for almost everything else except the IBM PC (and then, excepting those using a CGA or compatible video card) and certain low-end machines that typically had a built-in or bespoke monochrome monitor, then? Practically all non-IBM home computers I can name would be quite happy plugging directly into a standard television (NTSC or PAL), albeit some needing a seperate RF modulator if the television lacked a composite or RGB (component/SCART) input.
Most particularly, the Atari ST (& extended family covering STe, Mega ST/e, TT and Falcon), arguably the Amiga (family)'s main direct rival - even the early model I personally own having both composite and RGB SCART output capabilities to regular televisions (and tunerless TV-circuitry based monitors) at PAL 15625/50 and NTSC 15750/60 frequencies.
Now I think about it some more, did you maybe mean that the Amiga had a built-in GenLock, and otherwise specialist and typically expensive item that could match the machine's output frequency and H/V sync/blanking to that of an input, allowing for much easier production of graphics overlays? With the ST/etc obviously requiring a seperate, and necessarily even more complicated external box to carry out the same feature (of which I only saw one or two ever featured in an ST magazine, alongside much more basic video editing or titling software, for excessive prices). 82.46.180.56 (talk) 23:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as CGA having a horizontal frequency of 15.75kHz, the fact that it was a digital output format pretty much excludes it from being capable of generating braodcast-quality video.  The thing that made the Amiga uniquely suited for this task was that the timing for the entire chipset and the CPU was structured around a NTSC/PAL clock signal making genlocking a trivial matter. Other systems, like the Atari you mentioned, required some kind of separate framebuffer device to manage the same thing.--SEWalk (talk) 06:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  wording? 

message: Should this article not be renamed TriCaster, the Video Toaster has been renamed by NewTeck right??? 22:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  TriCaster