Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures
Have a read of this interesting article that explains about the Doomsday project.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/13419/?a=f
And if you are interested in reading more take a look at
http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html
Interestingly the two articles/sites do contradict each other slightly. The first article states that the Doomsday project has been successfully transferred from the original Laserdiscs and can now be run on modern PCs using a specially made BBC emulator. However the second site states that this project is up in the air and currently in an unknown limbo. So who is right? I would love to obtain a copy of the Project to use myself.
The second link/site goes into a lot of detail about the UK 1985 Doomsday Project. It details the technology developed to store and run the program, as well as the attempts so far to restore the original video footage, and to reverse engineer the original programs, data and images in an attempt to develop a new version of the Project that would run on current PCs.
Interestingly the Amiga was considered as the platform to be used to run the Doomsday project, but it was passed over for the BBC Master due to all UK school and many libraries already having them. How annoying it that? Had the Amiga been the platform they would have been able to create a much richer multimedia experience than they did, and they wouldn't of had to develop the custom trackerball interface to use the program (as the BBC had no built in support for pointer based interfaces), and the special video overlay technology to overlay the data content output from the BBC on top of the video and picture content from the laserdiscs. The Amiga and a Genlock could have done this very easily, and at a fraction of the cost. Plus if the Amiga had been used I doubt we would be in the current situation of not being able to access this project easily in the mainstream.
The other mad part is that the BBC worked with Philips to develop the Philips VP 415 Laserdisc player. It is the only player that can run the Doomsday project discs (no other Laserdisc players work with the discs), and the Doomsday project is the only project ever developed to run on this VP 415, so it was a very static hardware/software solution. This is the real reason why the Doomsday project was/is in real danger of being lost and unable to be accessed. It isn't just the computer program and platform being used to run it, but also a completely proprietary version of a laserdisc player.
On that page it also mentions that the complete combined Doomsday project package, consisting of the Doomsday (Philips VP 415) Player, a BBC Master and the 2 LV Discs cost £4000 on release! And schools had to pay the full amount if they wanted one. My Junior school had one of these setups, and at the time I didn't realise the expense they had paid to obtain one. Had I known I would have tried to gain access to use it myself. I wonder what happened to it? I might contact my old school and ask them.
I would love to try and work on creating a new version of this Project. With todays multimedia capabilities a feature rich project could easily be created.
The first article also discusses a lot of interesting things regarding archiving of digital data in the modern age and the best way to go about it. Using open formats is concluded as being the direction to always take because such standards being open means that in the future the technical detail is always going to be available to access the data stored in an open format, even if programs to access it are no longer available, so a new program can easily be written.