Amiga Hardware Database - Expansion cards

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2 expansions found

Manufacturer Digital Creations / Progressive Image, USA	Date 1991	Amiga any Amiga	Interface RGB port

Manufacturer

Date

1991

Amiga

any Amiga

Interface

RGB port

video display and digitiser

DCTV - Digital Composite Television - turns digital data from the RGB port to composite television signal
uses the RGB port as an I/O port for sending compressed video information:

the information is encoded into special Amiga display screens that DCTV recognises by a signature in the upper-left corner
these screens contain the digitised and compressed form of the analogue waveform data required to create the composite display

the resulting composite image quality is far better and much worse than a normal Amiga RGB display:

for pictures that contain a lot of colour changes (like photographic materials) the quality is as good as everyday television
in case of pictures with a lot of detail (like text) the display is blurry

uses the Amiga RAM as framebuffer - requires at least 1 MB of memory for functioning
supports resolutions from 640×200 to 736×482/566 (NTSC/PAL) in 24 bit
slow scan video digitiser - captures a still video frame in 6 to 10 seconds
the parallel port is used for sending digitised images to the Amiga
composite (RCA) input and output
DB23 RGB connector passthrough for connecting two monitors at the same time - one for the Amiga (RGB) and one for the DCTV (composite)
although DCTV does not interfere with normal genlock operation, its output cannot be fed into a genlock without the DCTV RGB Converter