GARETH POWELL ON CD-ROM Another revolution

Press, 26 April 1989, Page 47

GARETH POWELL ON CD-ROM Another revolution

We are about to see yet another revolution in personal computers. The revolution will be based on the addition of video capability using CD-ROM and other techniques. As a result, programs will be improved and made clearer by moving pictures of a better technical quality than those currently available on normal television. There is no doubt this revolution is going to happen — and relatively soon because several of the major manufacturers are totally dedicated to the idea. For the time being, the costs of the hardware are prohibitive for anyone except a developer but, as we shall see, the hardware eventually will be reduced to a single board with a few chips. The price of CD-ROM then will drop dramatically, and we will have video imaging in personal computers. The four major players who are going to make this happen are IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Sony, with a supporting chorus. The key development that they are involved is in DVI allied to CD-ROM. Remember those initials well — in coming years you will see them again and again. DVI, in our acronymmad trade, stands for digital video interactive. Intel, the chip manufacturing company that produces the microprocessing chips for most PCs, has just released a DVI system which is a first, if cumbersome, stage. Intel’s new product is called Pr 0750 Application Development Platform. Not an attractive name.

Pr 0750 allows the creation of DVI hardware and software. It is not intended to produce DVI in itself. The end produce is DVI. The “enablers” are the Pr 0750 and CD-ROM technology. What you will get with DVI working with CDROM will be, in truth, motion pictures with sound and high-speed graphics on a personal computer — something which we have not had to date. And all of this, we are assured, will cost less than a normal PC and will be in every home, as a chicken is in every pot. There seems little doubt that all these wonders will come about because IBM, Sony, Intel, and Miscrosoft — the four horsemen of this particular Apocalypse — say it will. Bill Gates, the eversmiling founder and chairman of Microsoft, explained at the company’s recent Fourth International Conference on CD-ROM that the basic idea was simple: to bring excitement back to personal computers at a low price; to convert computers into a consumer item, rather like a video player, rather than a specialised piece of hardware that frightens customers away. The basic problem developers are facing is the vast amount of memory required for moving images. A scanned-in A 4 image saved on a hard disk can take up to four megabytes of space. But there are possible solutions. Intel has come up with some nifty compression

algorithms which work while the pictures are being made and in reverse when they are being played back. Add to that the new availability of massive disk storage in CD-ROM form and you have at least the potential for motion pictures. The various players in this scene are very serious on the subject and putting money where their corporate mouths are. Intel and IBM will open on a development site in Princeton, New Jersey, to work on the DVI product. The aim of this joint venture initially is to produce a single board using IBM’s microchannel architecture, which will then work in the IBM PS/2 line of personal computers. Intel and IBM hope to have this ready by 1991. This does not mean that non-IBM users — non-micro-channel users — will be left out in the cold. For Intel, in the Pr 0750, has produced a developer’s kit which will allow the same functions to be designed for other machines. The Pr 0750 system consists of three add-in boards, four add-on modules — seven cards in all — system software and authoring software which, undestandably, will work only in a personal computer if there is an an 80386 chip driving it. This will be used by developers to create non-IBM, non-microchannel, boards. This development system eventually will shrink in size. Intel hopes one day to offer a single board to replace the seven boards of the Pr 0750. And it is also hoping that the price will

come down as well. At the moment, the Pr 0750 costs $U521,500 (about $NZ35,250). There is no doubt that we will see this technology, when it is fully developed, introduced in a massive way as part of trainig systems, especially since the advent of CDROM disks provides the memory space needed. Bill Gates, one of the greatest enthusiasts for CD-ROM technology — says he sees DVI working with CD-ROM as one of the ways to attract the masses to computers rather than CD-ROM acting on its own. What is needed, he says, is an increase in the use of CD-ROM. This sort of technology needs a million users before the prices can be brought right down. At the moment, we are some way from the Gates target. One industry report says there are now only 171,000 CD-ROMs operating.

Sadly, this magical video-CD-ROM future will not be able to run on current machines with any felicity. DVI will work only with personal computers when they have passed through a few levels of development. Mr Gates says that MSDOS with Windows and 640 K of memory, VGA display and the CD-ROM XA audio standard is the first level. Level two, available now to well-heeled users, is Windows with XA sound and a one-megabyte memory computer with extended VGA. This will see the start of video — but in a still rather than moving mode. Perhaps overlaid text with highquality pictures. The third level, which will follow close on its heels, will have OS/2 and Presentation Manager, four megabytes of RAM, the XA sound standard, i screen resolution higher

than VGA, and the DVI chip providing full-motion video. The question of . screen resolution is important. VGA, the current top of the line standard, is 640 x 480 pixels, which simply isn’t good enough. The new standard will be similar, perhaps, to that offered with the IBM 8514/A graphics controller, which has up to 1024 x 768 pixel resolution with

either 16 or 256 colours. Mr Jim Cannavino, president of IBM’s Entry Systems Division, which makes the PS/2 line, asked programmers to begin work on the “staggering explosion of innovative multi-media applications that I expect to be prevalent in the future.” He couldn’t resist pointing out that while DVI will work perfectly with IBM’s heavily patented

and controversial microchannel architecture, it might have problems with “other” unnamed systems. Intel’s vice-president, Mr Dave House, general manager of the firm’s microcomputer components group, says: “We want to establish an open DVI platform that ensures our future direction will have broad industry contributions and acceptance.”