The Evolution of the Commodore Amiga CDTV - Trash to Treasure (pt3)

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks for watching everyone! You can find relevant links in the video description and if you'd like to support The Cave and watch next weeks video 1 week early then head over to patreon.com/rmcretro Thank you for your support! Neil - RMC

[@geekwithsocialskills]

What's the make and model number of the monitor you are using with your CDTV?

[@havardd32665]

Missing links for the other episodes in the series ;)

[@TerribleFire]

Very nice CDTV. I agree keep things authentic on those rare machines.

[@scottwilliamclarke6442]

Great video, I have the 8MB fast and also the new ACE2B 2MB Chip Ram, 68010 and also a switchable dual kickstart as well, just make sure you use the V2.7 Extended ROMs and not the V2.30 (Even the modded ones) as you will lose 2MB of RAM as it's for the A570. You should try making your own CD's, I have a workbench 3.1 cd with whdload and game launcher which is cool and checkout the amigajay cd's and also English Amiga board if you haven't already :)

[@russelledwards001]

Thanks for helping me get through this godforsaken lockdown

[@ashens]

It took 30 years, but someone has finally said "I'm really happy with my CDTV" and meant it

[@crowsinthenose]

@ashens, did you ever play "psycho killer" on the CDTV? I 'upgraded' from an A500 to the CDTV back when and yeah, after those first thrilling 30 minutes, it was very hard to not feel ripped off. It was (and still is) a very attractive looking unit though.

[@AmigaWolf]

Great to see you here also ashens, my father never had a Amiga CDTV, he bought the Amiga 2000, with SCSI harddrive and 4 extra MB RAM, and capture card, he still have him, and i never seen it (Amiga CDTV) in the stores, i did see the other flop Philips CD-i in the store's, by 1996, the CD-i was discontinued altogether, sadly, only 1 million units were sold in 7 years losing Philips $1 billion.

[@magicmavis]

I loved my CDTV. I wanted an Amiga but I also wanted a CD player. Both in one box? Excellent.

[@anthonyciantar6015]

I wonder how much all the addons would have cost 30 years ago?

[@magicmavis]

@@anthonyciantar6015 mine came in one enormous box with the keyboard/mouse/FDD. It might have been £300 for it by then in 1994 as a clearance?

[@matthewdevalle404]

Someone once said that Commodore's marketing was so bad they'd advertise Kentucky Fried Chicken as Warm Dead Bird.

[@KenKeenan1973]

I heard that too except it was AT&T, and originally it was "Hot Dead Chicken". An actual AT&T marketing guy is supposed to have heard this and said, "no, it's even worse than that; we'd call it 'Warm Dead Chicken'"

[@TheKayliedGamerChannel-YouTube]

They did so well selling Turkeys for years..... ;-)

[@digiowl9599]

Best i recall, Commodore back in USA didn't have to market anything until the C64 no longer sold. Thus they had no clue what they were doing. Commodore UK, who i think handled the (Western) European market, did well with their marketing however. Just a shame they never got a chance at picking up the pieces when the company imploded back in USA.

[@valenrn8657]

@@digiowl9599 Escom was trash and liars.

[@philipcorner574]

Ahem, sorry about sending the Super Games Pak! I think we only played it once, and it was bundled with the A570. We definitely didn't pay £40 for it!

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Philip, it was good to enjoy the authentic CDTV experience of it!

[@ms-dosman7722]

'Eat my Reebok' brings a whole new meaning to Product Placement.

[@Jimbaloidatron]

Having worked with CD-ROM in those very early days, it's easy to forget just how difficult it was to prepare, burn and test those large data sets and that was a major hinderance to getting stuff out. First you needed a hard disk big enough to hold the source data; 1GB hard drives only launched the same year the CDTV did , enough for just one full CD's worth! Add to that, CD-R also only launched around the same time, wrote at single speed, were SCSI only and cost as much as a family car. I don't think the price of CD-R drives fell below a £1000 for another 4 years. Blank CD-R media wasn't exactly cheap, about £6 to £10 and as it is write once, if the write failed or you messed up, straight in the bin. Then you had to get your data 'taped out' for the CD pressing plant in the correct format, have a glass master made, and pay to have a run of CDs pressed. And none of that touches on the difficulty and cost of capturing images and video, which is why I think many titles were enhanced only by the addition of a CD Audio sound track!

[@MrDuncl]

Somewhere I have a copy of PCW that reviews the A1200 and also has an advert for a Philips CD writer at the prices you note. £3000 for the drive and £20 for a blank disc. Not surprisingly the advert was aimed at businesses. At around the same time a friend was proud of the fact that he could grab a single frame of video using his Sinclair QL and print the picture on his dot matrix printer - cutting edge stuff back in 1991.

[@knobbymcfeck]

Around 10:04, does that say, "Cain't build that here." ? Aye, cain't be bothered, pal.

[@charlesjmouse]

Very nice - jealous now! PS Velcro is the friend of all who don't want to drill holes. PPS As a simple retro upgrade swapping out the 68000 for a 68010 can make a very small difference.

[@londongaz2]

Look at that hifi stack! So much 90s, so much awesome 👌

[@Choralone422]

As an engineer working for Commodore in the late 80's and early 90's it must have been incredibly frustrating to pour your heart & soul into those machines only to see marketing and management fumble the rest. Great video series! I really enjoyed it!

[@meecob]

Starting to look like a Sharp X68000, especially when Silkworm was playing. Looks brill!

[@random007nadir]

In the late 90s, I met Jon Potter, the author of Directory Opus, at the local Amiga club. He lived here in Adelaide. Andrew Wilson too. He designed the Amiga 1000 Pheonix motherboard replacement that was popular at the time.

[@random007nadir]

​@@At0mic890 The ADAM (Adelaide Amiga) user group was pretty big back then. Weirdly. Eventually they became a BBS you could log into over a modem, then they became an email host and ISP. I think ADAM were eventually bought by iiNet, who was bought by TPG a few years back. I feel very old!

[@ozthekeymaster]

I've used Directory Opus on the PC as my Explorer replacement for years! It's the first thing I install on any new system. Honestly cringe when I have to use explorer. Directory Opus has so many features it's worth every penny.

[@RichRap3D]

All of those CDTV titles really are stretching the definition of 'games', they really made a misstep with the focus on education and interactive living room titles at launch. I do quite like the idea of an A600 based CDTV, but you can see how quickly they moved towards integration in the CD32 as the A1200 gained support.

[@MrDuncl]

I wonder if any market research that was done was in Europe or the USA ? In the UK I don't recall games machines (like Nintendo) being popular with parents until the Playstation, while throughout the 1980s you only had to mention "Educational" and parents would be queuing up with their chequebooks.

[@MrRobarino]

The Commodore CDTV, as well as the Philips CD-I and the 3D0 Interactive Multiplayer, were all trying to compete for the same educational and interactive home living room market. (a market that wasn't really there) All three companies released systems with expensive introductory prices for equipment that looked more like Stereo AV components then a video game console. By the time all three of these companies realized their missteps, the Sony Playstation had already been released.

[@MrDuncl]

@@MrRobarinoThe educational market certainly was there but for around the same money you could buy a better specified real computer. Amstrad (which in the 1980s was a huge success) made a big point of including monitors with their computers so Mum could still watch TV while the kids got on with coding (or more likely playing games) in their bedrooms.

[@MrRobarino]

@@MrDuncl Yes there was an educational market but it was not centered around the living room where these devices were being marketed for. That's the point.

[@MarkTheMorose]

4 dislikes? Eat RMC's Reeboks!

[@RMCRetro]

Eat my Reebok's Freakface!

[@fluffycritter]

Psycho Killer is one of those games that's aged so poorly that now it's almost charming.

[@MrDuncl]

The silly thing is, grabbing video into a computer was cutting edge stuff back then (as RMCs Quantel video showed).

[@Nukle0n]

Truely emblematic of the UK's base of bedroom coders making video games for the system their parents got them for school.

[@ZeusBike333]

I actually liked Psycho Killer. It was as MrDuncl says cutting edge stuff back in the day and was a nice respite from all the platformers and side scrolling play that dominated game play back in the early 90's. My favorite for the CDTV was Case of the Cautious Condor. I think Neil makes a good point about the lost opportunity of Lucas Art and publishers not taking advantage of the storage capacity to eliminate floppy swapping.

[@blairwigley]

The SCSI2SD should be able to be powered by the SCSI cable.

[@onaretrotip]

Really enjoyed that, Neil. Sim City without a mouse? And for that reason, I'm out.

[@rafamigayt]

I did buy the bundle with a black 1084S montor and regret selling just before year 2000 to this day. 8^(

[@drrev40]

What a pleasure to see such a classic piece of vintage kit. Of course I am talking about the Cambridge Audio A1 designed by the great Mike Creek of Creek Audio. Oh and the ultra rare Amiga as well with the ultra ultra rare peripherals. 😁👍 Great great stuff

[@fiddley]

Wow, did not realise those keyboards & disk drives were so sought after. I think I'll be having a rummage later!

[@scottwilliamclarke6442]

You can get an adapter and use a PS/2 type pc keyboard - works near perfect

[@davidandrew5465]

@@scottwilliamclarke6442 Or you can make an adaptor and use an A3000 keyboard, does work perfectly.. ;)

[@krankymann]

they are, i have the keyboard and use it on my CDTV and CD32 with an adapter. I still need a floppy drive and monitor and i think my set would be complete, i've all but given up on the monitor though at this stage i feel like it's a unicorn.

[@roscoe500]

Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of CDTV keyboards have been stripped of their black key caps by people customising 500s and 1200s. Any Amiga keyboard that isn't broken or severely yellowed is worth a fair bit now.

[@SomePotato]

"What if Commodore didn't screw this up?" is pretty much the standard questions for most of their systems after the Amiga 500.

[@ojkolsrud1]

Wasn't most the major release machines quite successful, though? But yes, Commodore made so many errors... It's a crying shame, really. I would've loved it if they were still around. PC, Amiga and Mac could've been the big three.

[@SomePotato]

@@ojkolsrud1 The 1200 was initially successful, but that didn't last very long. Some of the high end machines might have made a good profit in their niche, it's hard to get numbers. But they releases so many weird machines without direction. As you said, so many errors... It's a shame considering how far ahead of its time the Amiga was when it was released.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@SomePotato they were successful in Europe, what you say is true about the USA though

[@SomePotato]

@@kaitlyn__L Yes, in Europe with the 500 and to a lesser extent the 1200. Not much else.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@SomePotato the 600 was also very successful in Germany and the UK, and Commodore also sold a fairly successful line of PC compatibles in these territories that it never bothered to in North America. The European arm was pretty financially healthy when American Commodore tanked, but they got sold off as part of the parent company’s bankruptcy and were essentially shut down against their wishes.

[@smokey91820]

I listened to this through my cambridge audio a5, 21 year old and still works great

[@hiroprotagonist1587]

I've got an A5 running a pair of B&W DM602s, bombproof rich and deep.

[@smokey91820]

@@hiroprotagonist1587 I use Tannoy q6 bookshelf speakers, I tried to change but it is really nice lol

[@kattan2006]

I really love the way you covered this. Professional yet entertaining. Good job :)

[@Jamal_Tyrone]

Yeah, bringing out actual Amiga 500 games on a supposed upgrade machine was not a good idea. Imagine bringing out Abe's Odyssey on the PlayStation when people had already played Flashback???? I mean, they're practically the same game!!!

[@bob23301]

I had one and i thought it was awesome and i played nothing but Dune 2 on it. Lol

[@brostenen]

The C64 looks more and more yellow. 🙂

[@TheBasementChannel]

Those black peripherals 😍

[@carltechnocop]

at 11:29.......that's a sample stolen from the film "Dark Star"

[@GraphicalRanger]

Sounds a bit like Battlestar Galactica

[@Teppic11]

Around that time the Amiga was doing exceptionally well in anything video and rendering related, you'd have thought Commodore would have done everything they could to support that and make it as dominant as the Mac was in DTP. So instead people were stuck with outdated CPUs and 16 colours at high res when they should have been concentrating on 68020+ and 24 bit graphics as maximum priority. If they'd done this and then come out with a higher spec CDTV/Amiga with a CD drive, with decent software, I think they'd have had a success.

[@DragonNova]

I actually think they should have just waited until the A1200 was released and included a built-in CD-ROM drive (external floppy to keep costs down). If they'd released this CD-ROM equipped A1200/A4000 at the same time as the CD32 it would have given the developers a reason to really take advantage of the format. The ECS chipset was not a good match for CD-ROMS, AGA would have been much better. The benefits of hindsight ;)

[@Zentauri77]

After playing Monkey Island 2, I remember playing Indy 4 on my A500 from harddisk. That game was SLOW. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.

[@lmfsilva3000]

"Eat my Reeboks, freak face" is a solid contender for "most early 90s line ever said"

[@valenrn8657]

In 1992, my Dad traded our A500 Rev 6A and bought a secondhand Amiga 3000/030 @25Mhz with 4MB fast ram + 2MB chip ram, and added an external SCSI CD-ROM drive.

[@FatNorthernBigot]

Nice one, Pillock.

[@thepillock]

I aim to please :D

[@Charlie-Cat.]

One of these days Neil, we need to see you in a tuxedo in one of your videos. 8^) Anthony..

[@Zerbey]

Ah yes, Interactive Movies. Seems like they were huge for 5 minutes in the 1990s and then vanished completely.

[@Clay3613]

They came back in 2015.

[@absalomdraconis]

Someone could arguably make some decent money if they actually bothered to figure out how to do it well. I said _decent_ money, not _millions._

[@TheTurnipKing]

spoiler: They were NEVER huge.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@TheTurnipKing indeed, they merely hoped they could be induced into being huge.

[@vapourmile]

The idea wasn't great even then. CPUs had just enough performance to run crude FMV. In practice it didn't work any better than filling a game with cut-scenes and was merely a stepping stone towards fully interactive real-time 3D. At the stage we're at now, there isn't any point in interactive movies. Probably the closest thing to anything that really worked as an interactive movie is Dragon's Lair.

[@nekononiaow]

Thank you for the video Neil. I do agree that it would have been more semsible to extend the Amiga with the A570 and thus offer more possibilities for developers without requiring them to take risks on a new unproven market. Moreover, for a time, the use of CDs would have offered excellent piracy protection, which we know the Amiga games market needed badly. The interviews with Gail Wellington on part 1 and this one are very enlightening and very emotionally touching. If you ever get a chance to talk to her again, please wish her well.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

Behold the mighty beard!

[@RMCRetro]

Behold!

[@bookofdaveandsteve]

It's so lush

[@madgebishop5409]

the ineptitude of Commodore marketing never ceases to amaze me, not getting lucas arts on board should have been a no brainer..amongst others..

[@kevincozens6837]

How interesting. The truly awful game had a sound clip said by Patrick Macnee and A Bun For Barney was narrated by the fourth Doctor. :)

[@VladoT]

Hi-Fi components and systems were all the hype and were big sellers in the late 80's along with the VCRs that were modelled unsuprisingly as a Hi-Fi components then. So the CDTV should have been a success but it was out too late and the software titles were bad as the RMC stated.

[@hazy33]

Went to a preview of the cdtv back in the day. 2 minutes and you could tell it was a complete an utter failure of a unit. Designed for a market that didn't exist at a price that was laughable. Basically Commodore committing business suicide.

[@tekk9995]

Seeing the adverts I wonder why they marketed it as 'with better graphics' being a regular A500. Was it a reference to the ECS chipset?

[@PaulBednall]

Hi Neil, many thanks for this "trash to treasure" series on the CDTV, it's inspired me to dig out all my old Amiga stuff I've got in the loft, A500+, A1200, & a CDTV. My dad has got a Philips CD-i somewhere stashed away.

[@darren25061965]

My Loft is also full of treasure, mainly AMIGA`s, A500, A500+, A1200, A1200T, A2000 missing a few bits. Never managed to aquire the A4000 I always desired. Add to those an Atari 800XL + Tape drive and Cartridges, X-Box, X-Box 360, X-Box 1, Original Playstation and NES. My wife keeps asking "why don`t you throw all that old junk out", I have to remind her I don`t own any junk.

[@MrDuncl]

@@darren25061965 Yesterday's junk (like the working Spectrum I bought for £1) seems to be turning into today's antiques. Check the prices on eBay. They seen to have gone up a lot since I sold a complete A1200 setup with SCSI CD ROM and an accelerator for about £120. I still have four Amigas in the loft despite being an Atari ST fan back in the day. Lets just hope we don't flood the market by all trying to sell at once :-)

[@pelgervampireduck]

future wars is one of my favorites, I played it a lot on PC, and just this year I found out there's a CD VERSION FOR PC TOO!!. I played the floppy version, I guess the difference must be cd audio or fmvs, I'll have to try it.

[@RcAircraft]

Loved this one. 👍 .Can not wait for the CD32 Video. I remember rumours that the play station was bought about after Sony was the supplier of the CD32 CD Drives.

[@MrDuncl]

It was actually going to be the Nintendo Playstation (prototypes exist) but Sony and Nintendo fell out when Nintendo started taking to Philips about buying CD-ROM drives from them.

[@Gooberslot]

I wish someone would make a SCSI adapter for the A500. :(

[@PATTHECATMCD]

Pistorm iooks very promising. Not a scsi adapter, arguably something better.

[@matt4193]

♫ I see a SCSI and I want to paint it black~♪

[@Supersimagicguy]

Great video, can't wait until you get your hands on an Open Flop and having a play ;)

[@paulisthebest3uk]

Ive got a philips CDi-210 which is great in its own right, especially after installing the video cartridge, but i dont know why i seem to want a CDTV more - maybe because i know its based on the amiga and love amiga systems

[@MrDuncl]

I have had a couple of CDi s. Were there ever any decent games for it ? Having said that the first made a nice CD player and the FMV was impressive. Basically the forerunner to DVD.

[@troelshansen6650]

The game I remember the most from the CDTV is Prey. An alien encounter

[@jaseman]

My thoughts after watching this are.... Will GTA 5 and Wikipedia look as terrible as this does in another 30 years compared to whatever is available then?... Presumably fully immersive VR and direct brain interfaces with graphics so great you can't tell it's computer generated. Wikipedia will be in multi-angle video documentary format and updated by volunteer media creators. KZbin is probably already better as a research tool than Wikipedia now anyway.

[@MrDuncl]

I think the fact that home computers / games consoles got from ZX81 to the Amiga CD in ten years is far more impressive than anything that has happened with them in the last ten. Of course in thirty years time you will probably be able to play GTA 8 on your Playstation 8 while your car drives you to work :-)

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

How much for the filth on the keyboard and floppy disk drive? 😂😁

[@RMCRetro]

How does 350 sound?

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

@@RMCRetro it depends if it's possible to shake vintage dundruff off the keyboard. 😁

[@krankymann]

the black mouse in that promo image is the IR wireless mouse.

[@cfriedel123]

Thanks for taking me down memory lane! I remember when I got my A570, the Fred Fish CD, as well as the 17-bit CD. I thought I'd never get through all those games and information! I remember not liking the CD caddy though because I only had a few of them and had to keep switching my discs in and out of them. =)

[@UK_Cobra]

26:47 Almost brought a tear to my eye that. The Amiga had so much going for it, but the US management killed it off.

[@TheSugarDaddy1]

I never used one but some lad in our school said there was a football game with John Motson was the commentator he said it was brilliant I hope you can look that up

[@fu1r4]

I always used "Disk Master" instead of DOPUS...

[@newkfromrotterdam]

i always was very fond of the low footprint of DirWork, also a d-opus alternative

[@technickuk]

I think the A570 could have really helped the games producers fight their up-hill battle of piracy, which was a real struggle for them back then.

[@RMCRetro]

I agree. Imagine if it came out in the late 80s with those first Japanese CDROM drives.

[@vapourmile]

Well, it wasn't a struggle for me. I simply abandoned Commodore and starting developing for the PC where piracy was and still is far less of a problem.

[@MrDuncl]

I recall thinking that at the time about CD-ROMs in general. I fitted my first CD ROM drive into a 486 PC with a 170Mbyte hard drive. No chance of copying a CD to the hard drive with that.

[@SchwachsinnProduzent]

Seems like an adapter for an IBM keyboard would be a great project idea. How different is the pinout?

[@heidirichter]

Regarding your "what if" towards the end... I'm reminded of the MegaCD (Sega CD in North America), where Sega tried to do something along the lines of what you mentioned. It could have worked well for Commodore perhaps, it it could have been yet another chicken and egg situation.

[@nicwilson89]

Heh, I have one of those Cambridge Audio amps

[@Safetytrousers]

I think Richer Sounds shifted boatloads of them in the day.

[@hiroprotagonist1587]

@@Safetytrousers They did because they're effin' awesome, I'm still running an A5 through B&W DM602s and couldn't be happier with the sound. Maybe someday I'll upgrade to a Linn amp but that day is not today.

[@rickylovesyou]

From trash to slightly better trash. 🤣

[@RMCRetro]

🤣

[@synaesthesia2010]

i remember that amplifier from when Richer Sounds were selling them more than 20 years ago. they're still the only retailer that sells that brand from what i understand as they have an ongoing partnership. i remember wanting one of those amps but was always put off by the lack of a headphone socket.

[@olegpereverzev5015]

So cdtv is basically Amiga 500, but it costs like steel bridge because it was bad. Nice?

[@RMCRetro]

Welcome to the world of Commodore

[@absalomdraconis]

The "fat Victorian nudes" disk, judging from the similarity of the bearded guy to someone I saw a picture of in a History Guy video last evening, may be a poorly thought out piece of nostalgia. He looks like potentially _the_ first guy to do video, before Edison normalized it with film projection. Apparently had to brew up his own mixtures to get reaction times fast enough, _and_ answered the question of whether horse hooves ever _completely_ lift off the ground.

[@rsmith02]

He's actually quite famous in the history of photography. No idea what's on that disk, though.

[@MonochromeWench]

magazines with reviewers who would use the whole scale when giving a score

[@iXien]

Well done with this great vidéo series on the so smart CDTV. I really love this system. I grew up with an A600 (yes, I know it isn't your prefered Amiga, but nobody's perfect) but at the beginning of the 2k years, I was searching for a smarter solution to keep an Amiga in my living room and the CDTV was of course the answer. I made a lot of modifications all over the years. I begun buying all the official accessories : wired and RF mouse, second generation remote controller (the one with a mouse/joypad physical switch), trackball, joy/mouse adapter, floppy drive, keyboard, 64Kb memory card. The prices weren't the same than nowadays of course. And then begun the time of upgrades : ECS Denise chip, Kickstart 2.04 with KS-switcher to keep the good old 1.3, CDTV ROM 2.7, internal joystick/mouse adapter, 8Mb Fast-RAM, 2Mb Chip RAM, SCSI card with IDE adapter to connect an internal CF card as primary HDD with Workbench 2.10 (the better for me on an ECS system) and a second CF drive replacing the old and useless memory card reader. In this one, I managed to configure a 32Gb CF card formatted in PFS3 containing lot of games, demos, GFX, music, etc. As comfort, I then bought PC mouse and keyboard adapters and a CD32 to Megadrive 6 button controller adapter. On these I connected a wireless combo keyboard/mouse and an 8bitDo M30 joypad initially designed for Megadrive. But like you I love that a system remain as clean as possible. That's why all my modificiations are internal only and when the front panel hood is in place, you can't imagine my CDTV is modded. I keep another CDTV untouched destined to host all my official accessories I don't use anymore on my upgraded system. Like you my CD drive doesn't work anymore since only some weeks sadly. Your video was really interesting about that. I suppose I will have to replace all the capacitors to resurrect it too. I really love your Gotek solution, really well made and always respecting perfectly the CDTV. The interview of Gail Wellington is so interesting. This woman made so much for the Amiga standard, particularly in the US. Many thanks for all this work on your videos, always made with a very professional touch. Just keep the good work !

[@ewhac]

12:06: Perhaps you covered it in another episode: Did you play any music CDs in the machine? If so, what did you think (he said, fishing for feedback)? 15:02: You _had_ to make me remember this, did you? Seriously, though, they deserve some credit for trying to make an FMV "Quicktime Event" game using just a 1X CD-ROM drive. 24:46: Have you tried Brad Schenck's _Labyrinth of Time,_ (released one year before Myst), which was designed to make use of all that space on a CD-ROM?

[@robintst]

Hindsight is 20-20 but really, come 1992, they should have shifted focus entirely back to the computers, eaten the cost, and included an external CD-ROM drive with every Amiga 1200 with a push for AGA games as CD releases, double down on pushing the strengths of the existing computer line instead of going after the multimedia fad or trying to be a player in the console market with the CD32. Then, if this was technically possible as it's my own hypothetical strategy, take a cue from SEGA by adding a secondary 68000 CPU as a co-processor like the Mega CD had that could be used for programming extra graphical tricks in games like rotating and scaling or to push the arithmetic needed for simple 3D rendering at a playable framerate.

[@FuZZbaLLbee]

The computer in the livingroom always failed. CDi, CD TV, Xbox one. Now we just have apps on the TV itself

[@RMCRetro]

Don't forget Windows XP Media Centre Edition and the various lounge friendly form factors with mosquito like fans working overdrive

[@MrDuncl]

@@RMCRetro That doesn't describe the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo E still under my TV and upgraded to an I3 Motherboard. I think the problem is most people subscribe to something like Sky then expect the hardware for free.

[@stevec00ps]

That English Music Oh wow proper LOL there :)

[@RMCRetro]

🤣

[@madcommodore]

Still the only computer that can be turned on from full power down using a remote control. Poor support from the scene today, not even a single homebrew compilation of disk based Cinemaware games on a CD exists for example., so a very expensive luxury bauble. I have 3 and it is the second best Amiga ever made because it looks great, and via the CD-ROM for just 99 bucks more than the hideous A500 it solves the limiting 4 channel nature of Portia/Paula and negates the need for expensive hard drives for more complex games. Commodore never learned with their joystick port mistake of the TED series so you need an adaptor and none of the big software publishers except Cinemaware even produced one game so there really isn't a must have game you can't enjoy on a disk based Amiga. Only really eclipsed by the all conquering holy trinity (power, elegance, quality) of the Amiga...AKA A1000.

[@ArthLud]

Hi, Neil. Great video, man! That Cambridge Audio amp suits the CDTV beautifully! I never owned a CDTV and from what I see now - with all incompatibility and inconvenience, the cables, adapters, and all that sort of hassle - it's not worth the money even today. But it's great machine and it was a pleasure to watch. P.S. It is Police Quest not Please Quest. :P

[@HoffmanYouTube]

One of the best looking amiga setup i have ever seen.

[@RMCRetro]

We're going to need two CDTVs and a copy of PT1210

[@Gadgetman1989]

Awesome 👍 loved this series, perfect blend of teaching and repairing

[@shelby3822]

I swear all those cut scenes are just for retailers to play on loop and capture our $$

[@GeoNeilUK]

The CDTV should have been sold as an Amiga from the very start, had they done market research, it would havfe been launched in Europe as an Amiga, with Kickstart/Workbench 2.x instead of 1.3 and maybe a 68010 or 68020... possibly with the AGA chipset if it was ready by then... ...basically, a CD32 with a keyboard and a mouse! Also, if I was at Commodore, I'd have been trying to add 3D graphical capabilities to the AGA chipset and thus the A1200, A4000 and CD32.

[@RunOfTheHind]

Women In Motion was Alan Partridge's university computer science project. The concept was later further developed into Lady Shapes.

[@Ingens_Scherz]

I bet my old mate from uni, Dave Cooney - who was (if memory serves) an Engineer BSc of some kind - will be watching this. He bought one as soon as it came out. I'd had an Amiga 500 for quite a while and was pretty non-plussed by this...object. An Amiga? Ridiculous. Then he showed me what it could do. He also played Use Your Illusion II in the CD ROM drive - something I'd never seen before at the time - and I was gobsmacked. "Yesterday, there were so many things I was never told. Now that I'm startin' to learn..." Er, sorry, I was a bit transported to "yesterday" then by this video ;)

[@tristanfletcher6621]

When Commodore discontinued the CDTV they sold their remaining UK stock to a clearance warehouse; I purchased a brand new boxed CDTV complete with keyboard, mouse and floppy drive for £100 from the clearance warehouse in 1994 and connected it to my Amiga 4000 as a CD drive through Parnet. I probably should’ve kept hold of it, along with my Sam Coupe and C64GS!!

[@johandenhertog6878]

Had back in 1992 a CDTV but I don’t like it and a year latter I got the A1200. Had almost all the different AMIGA’s. But now I got only a A500 with 2 A1200’s and 2 Vampire V4 Standalone. The AMIGA period is a extension for my first computer the C64. Now I relive my old computers and I’m happy with it. All my AMIGA’s are fast with 68030 and 68060 cards in it.

[@CarsandCats]

The CDTV (of which I still own 2) should have been marketed as an advanced computerized CD audio player. It also had completely unused MIDI ports which they never even advertised that they could have offered a keyboard peripheral.

[@kyrkbymannen]

I remember playing the sim city on the CDTV for hours and hours and loving it 😂 I also played through the psycho killer game, and I bought a cd+graphics cd which I listened to all the time just to see the graphics with Fleetwood Mac.

[@kjaergaard12345]

This is great, I would like to see more content like this 👍

[@shameless_2]

I wonder how good it would perform as a Music-CD-Player, or if it actually is capable of running CD-A. Perhaps together with a Stereo connected via cinch...

[@GregDaniel78]

Nice job! It always looked like an essential purchase back in the day, but I didn't get on board with CD software until I could get hold of a Power Computing (Squirrel) PCMCIA cd adaptor for my A1200. I still have it and it works just fine. Less than 6 months later, I'd bought my first PC, so it didn't get much use. I would have loved to have an a1200-spec amiga in a CDTV case though. I always loved their 'hifi' aesthetic.

[@lgf1978]

Nice story about the CDTV. 14years ago i was visiting a friend of mine working at a second hand store. they had recently been donated a lot of electronic equipment. and one of them was a CDTV :) trying to hide my enthusiasm, i carefully asked the pricing of this "cd player". and i got it for somewhere between 10 or 15 USD...... (!) it still lives well in my possession. I have a beige cd caddy, remote and the floppy drive. i also havce the same SCSI controller you have, and i was lucky to find a 4MB memory expansion card, the one for the CDTV internal expansion or diagnostics... i never really understood what that port was there for. but it works. it works really nice. Future plans for my CDTV. install a HDD of some kind. SCSI to SD, most likely. and making a 1.3 kick bootable zip disk. the drive works, fine i guess... have not been able to verify this yet. I do miss the keyboard, so i need a way to connect one of my A2K keyboard to the CDTV. And like you, i am proud of having a CDTV in my Amiga collection. :D

[@eugenb9017]

Slightly faster processor. 14 MHz instead on 7 MHz, double the speed. Ok, double=slightly, if you say so...

[@ryanmacewen511]

Thank you! Sexy as it is, it was mainly the best looking CD player ever (with video on my CRT at all times). I'm looking to using mine again. Botht he machine and screen were so satisfying to look at. I watched all 3 parts of this, but I must have missed any talk of how you did output the video to your LCD. I see in one shot a 23 pin to VGA adapter. It looks good enough to me in your video. Where did you source yours, please? I'm currently struggling with video connectivity options I'd love to know what method you used to connect to your monitor. Was your monitor VGA, or SCART, or other? I'm in the US, and I don't yet own anything SCART (UK in the lead, AGAIN). ;) Many thanks.

[@TheTurnipKing]

How does kick 3.1 work with the CDTV? I mean, that has its own CD extensions. And in theory, those *should* be backwards compatible with the CDTV ones. So it seems like you'd get very complete functionality with the upgraded ROMS, you'd just lose that CDTV splash screen. edit: I think openflops is just an open source version of hardware equivalent to the Gotek.

[@sohatyi]

Town with no Name was so bad, I owned it when it came out, truly awful. I did rip the assets off the disk and create a more interactive shooter from it though. Even my amateurish attempt was so much better than the actual game. Sadly long lost, along with my expanded PC port of Julian Gallop's Chaos.

[@garyhart6421]

I gave away (cost of postage) a CDTV mouse to an Amibay chap from Norway. "Late 90s" --- Amiga Format kept going until May 2000 and Amiga Active until Nov 2001.

[@tomlee80]

I remember a friend who'd never owned an Amiga getting a super discount CDTV with disk drive, mouse and keyboard. I had the Amiga 500+ and spent a good amount of time copying games onto diskettes for him. He was even able to play a few of my games that were incompatible with Kickstart 2.0 on the 500+ and I was a little bit jealous. When the CD32 I was bitterly disappointed with its aesthetics. An Amiga AGA 1200/4000 chipset in a CDTV style case would have been a dream come true for me.

[@thepirategamerboy12]

Fyi, you can convert some AmigaDOS games to run off of a CD via a utility called ISOCD. Tried it with Alien Syndrome and it worked.

[@rochr4]

ok, it was solid gaming machine, had kick switch and 2mB fast ram? upgrade and very late hard disk, my fav game was DUNE, the adventure games also the DEMO cd disks? they where full of stuff, incredible stuff to explore back then, I yet have to find a video or some info on those CD demo disks, gg.

[@loganjorgensen]

Ain't that the truth, obscure peripherals being very expensive but not actually necessarily being of high quality. Well hmm that's a big mistake, need a mouse for such a game. Yeah you really want to gouge your customers with overpriced low quality games when you launch a platform. O_o??? Strange parallel to the Mega CD, repackage old games with minor features, well better than no features added like Amiga CD32 did. ^_^ Kind of old timey but there was a series of "in motion" from when moving pictures were brand new, so historical photography brought home. Psycho Killer isn't very good but the engine foundation and digitization could have been made into better games, Japan has better examples of visual novels or photo plays so I see the potential in it. Amiga video hardware was quite robust but the cartoony stuff and voice tracks fared better than FMV, much like on MCD. I agree, better to court Graphic Adventure gamers at that time when multimedia was enhancing that genre ten fold.

[@d2factotum]

Amazing how many of these "what if" scenarios boil down to "What if Commodore's business decisions didn't suck?". Although I suppose it could have been worse, they could have designed and released the CD-i...

[@bnadvornik]

I think it's amazing that during 80's and 90's so many companies were cranking out computers. Why do we only get Windows PC's and Macs? It was an epic time for home computers. Where did all that creativity go. Was everyone shackled to PC's for the rest of their lives and doomed to boring computers. It's good to see other folks trying to bring back 8 bit computers and the Mega 65 project is absolutely awesome but hardly a drop in the bucket from a number's standpoint. A few thousand followers buying an obscure computer is nowhere near the numbers churned out by almost every big company in the country. It also led to a HUGE number of bankruptcies fueled by bad marketing or no marketing and lagging sales. I guess the price of the downright amazing technology we carry around with us daily was our innocence and wonder at what these machines could accomplish. Stereo SID music still makes me giggle like a schoolboy because it's not 100% perfect and because it was the first to do such a thing with music. I also love that it made the music industry lose their collective minds over not being able to stop it from happening. Good Times!

[@rCRTEr]

I thought in the day that the price was way too high for what you got, and yes I waited until the first CD-ROM readers was released to A500 and later I got one to my A1200. And the 1200 with a cd-rom reader was a great option back then. So they should have skipped the CDTV and put their money on a cd-rom reader peripheral at half the price then they would have made great success at the time I am sure of that. Yes I also hated the A600 for many years it was a worse A500 in many ways back at the time. Today many that owns one seems to have found use for them as a retro system for nostalgic reasons. But the expansions options on the A600 was very limited at the time, and even a simple accelerator card modification could risk the entire computer. I had one member in the Amiga association that had some bad luck with that back in the days he managed to burn the motherboard so badly that it was stone cold dead. And the member was used with a soldering iron so he was no beginner he was more advanced than me because he used to repair our amigas when they broke down. He later bought a A1200 and was very pleased with it, and how easy it now was to install a 030 accelerator card with memory expansion included. Commodore should never have discontinued the A500+ so early, it was a still popular machine at the time they cancelled production, and skipped the Amiga 600. But yes it is interesting to ask the question "what if" and that is mine "what if". Keep up the good work and it was very interesting to see a CDTV and how it worked because I never had one either and I was a big fan of almost everything that commodore released back then. I wish I had my machines still alive especially my A4000/030 and I had a 040 processor card in the end to it. I have owned A500, A500+, A1200, A4000 in the amiga range but also Commodore 128D, but I have used a Commodore 64 and a VIC-20 but that was at school so not my own computers.