8088 Does Video

[airship]

Check this out:

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/feature-modder-hacks-1980s-ibm-pc-to-play-full-motion-color-video

All on a 4 MHz 8088 PC with CGA graphics.

But couldn't we make a claim that the C128 does better than this? I mean, there are some demos out there for the C64 and C128 that kick this thing's butt, right?

[smf]

But couldn't we make a claim that the C128 does better than this? I mean, there are some demos out there for the C64 and C128 that kick this thing's butt, right?

There is nothing like this on the c64/c128, the 8088 is better in alot of ways & you have more ram and a hard disk. The graphical quality might not be great, but they weren't claiming that.

The sound was good though, if that was actually coming from the PC.

A floppy drive just doesn't cut it if you want FMV.

[Mark Smith]

Nice .. wonder if it's like multi coloured ASCII ?  I'd have though an 8088 could shove text around the screen pretty quickly .. still keeping the i/o driven speaker fed and not screwing the display is neat! :-)

Mark

[airship]

They didn't use the internal speaker - they used a Sound Blaster card. I don't know if that is different than what you said or not.

[Mark Smith]

Ahh BIG difference ... even Ye Olde 8bit Soundblaster had DMA, that would lighten the load considerably.

[smf]

There is alot of info here http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption
Including the source and some other videos in the same format.

If you had a 10mb hard drive, or of course some SDCARD software then there is no reason that the video itself couldn't be played on a 64/128. Sound would be a more interesting matter... Maybe something extra for 1541 ultimate :-)

There is a windows player, but it only looks any good in a small window. That old ibm monitor really does make the video look better than it is ( plus of course you only see the video in a small window on your pc anyway ).

[Mark Smith]

Well I can play "video" from my MMC64, and it has synchronised MP3 music .. does that top the 8088 ? ;-)

[nikoniko]

Interesting. I'd heard about the AVF plugin before but never seen it in action until I looked up some videos on Youtube:

The Simpsons Intro

Test Video

Anyway, since Trixter allows a Soundblaster in his setup, maybe we can allow for the MMC64 when comparing FMV capabilities. I'd say the C64 videos have much better clarity, which is to be expected with a redefinable character set, but The Simpsons intro definitely seem to be lacking something when viewed in greyscale. Maybe it would be less jarring to view something one expects to be black and white, like It's a Wonderful Life or something.

[Mark Smith]

I don't suppose there is any reason for limiting to greyscale ... the hardwork would be in the pre-propcessing of the input video, AVF converter takes greyscale BMPs as it's input ..  the plugin fileformat allows for 3040bytes if multicolour (152x80) data per frame ... you could just change the pallet used for everyframe if need by :-)  Need a new AVF converter tool to do it though.

Mark

[smf]

Well I can play "video" from my MMC64, and it has synchronised MP3 music .. does that top the 8088 ? ;-)

It's tricky, because you could put a mpeg 2 decoder with it's own video output on a c64 cartridge. Throw in a core 2 duo processor and a couple of gig of ram and you're done.

Sound blaster 2.0 was released some time at the beginning of the 1990's and was common. All of the equipment he used is the type of thing that people threw away over a decade ago.

Bearing in mind the challenge of creating video without being able to redefine the character set, IMO 8088 corruption still wins.

[Blacklord]

All of the equipment he used is the type of thing that people threw away over a decade ago.

Errr... not all of us :ironisk: