1ST1
Veteran Member
Hello, long before Microsoft tryed to conquer the living room with Windows Media Center as a multimedia all purpose computer, there were other attempts to do so. The point was that nobody liked to have such a box like an IBM XT besides the TV set, and for long time the computers were not powerfull enough for multimedia applications. The first a little bit successfull attempt was by Commodore, the CDTV which was based on the Amiga technology. CDTV's idea was to put computer hardware into a box which looks like hifi equipement, so you could stack this with your amplifier, CD-player, videorecorder, tuner, taoe deck and so on in your hifi tower. Without looking too close, nobody cculd see that there was a computer until you attach the cable based keyboard, but there was also a quite large remote control for the basic media player function. The CDTV could play music CDs, simple graphics animations and Amiga games. There were peoples which build in hard disk and were also running more serious Amiga applications onto it. At about the same time, arround 1991, Philips tryed to do something very similar with the CDi system.
One of the next attempts is what I introduce to you now, it was introduced in 1995. It was based on a 80486DX4-100 plus MPEG accelerator card or as my example on a Pentium 75. Like CDTV it is sitting in a hifi like chassis but it was much more powerful, it was already able to play VCD (video compact disks), go to Internet (through internal modem) and play PC games. As operating system Windows 95 was used with some interesting preinstalled applications for home office, midi-music and games. Like the CDTV and CDi before, very unusual for a PC it has two SCART connector, one to daisy chain a videorecorder, and the other to connect the TV set. It also could be connected to a VGA monitor. As one of the rare PCs it also directly has standard DIN MIDI connector to connect synthesizers and so. The keyboard is wireless with integrated trackball and it has a separate remote controll for media player applications. To get also computer beginners to the machine an alternative user interface called OliPilot was installed where the applications are presented in different rooms, so clicking on the TV set on the screen opens the VCD player, clicking on a fax machine opened the telephone recorder and fax machine application, and so on. What I havent seen befor on such an old PC is the very quick standby and resume function which is done over the standby button in the frontpanel and on the remote control. It switches off immediatelly and switches on and continues where it was sent to stadby before immediatelly, realy like you expect it from a hifi device. The ting what is not so good for a hifi device that is the noisy 2 GB harddisk, also for securing the installation I have to replace it by a compact flash card.
So this is Olivetti Envision. As far as I know the first commercial attempt to make a Home Theater PC (HTPC) based on X86 PC technology. The next attempt to introduce a commectial HTPC was done by Fujitsu-Siemens, called Multitainer. It was very similiar to the Envision, but more powerfully, running on Windews 98, also with it's own simplified user interface and based on a Celeron at 700 MHz, this one already was cabable to play DVD, maybe with help of an accelerator card.
One of the next attempts is what I introduce to you now, it was introduced in 1995. It was based on a 80486DX4-100 plus MPEG accelerator card or as my example on a Pentium 75. Like CDTV it is sitting in a hifi like chassis but it was much more powerful, it was already able to play VCD (video compact disks), go to Internet (through internal modem) and play PC games. As operating system Windows 95 was used with some interesting preinstalled applications for home office, midi-music and games. Like the CDTV and CDi before, very unusual for a PC it has two SCART connector, one to daisy chain a videorecorder, and the other to connect the TV set. It also could be connected to a VGA monitor. As one of the rare PCs it also directly has standard DIN MIDI connector to connect synthesizers and so. The keyboard is wireless with integrated trackball and it has a separate remote controll for media player applications. To get also computer beginners to the machine an alternative user interface called OliPilot was installed where the applications are presented in different rooms, so clicking on the TV set on the screen opens the VCD player, clicking on a fax machine opened the telephone recorder and fax machine application, and so on. What I havent seen befor on such an old PC is the very quick standby and resume function which is done over the standby button in the frontpanel and on the remote control. It switches off immediatelly and switches on and continues where it was sent to stadby before immediatelly, realy like you expect it from a hifi device. The ting what is not so good for a hifi device that is the noisy 2 GB harddisk, also for securing the installation I have to replace it by a compact flash card.
So this is Olivetti Envision. As far as I know the first commercial attempt to make a Home Theater PC (HTPC) based on X86 PC technology. The next attempt to introduce a commectial HTPC was done by Fujitsu-Siemens, called Multitainer. It was very similiar to the Envision, but more powerfully, running on Windews 98, also with it's own simplified user interface and based on a Celeron at 700 MHz, this one already was cabable to play DVD, maybe with help of an accelerator card.
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