[HN Gopher] Nuon, a gaming chip that nearly changed the world, b...
___________________________________________________________________
Nuon, a gaming chip that nearly changed the world, but didn't
(2015)
Author : pjmlp
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-01-26 11:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| lizknope wrote:
| I had the Toshiba DVD player with Nuon. It also supported HDCD
| music. They were regular CDs that could be played in any CD
| player but in an HDCD device there and it supposedly sounded
| better. I never had any Nuon content but I did have a single HDCD
| disc and an extra light would show up when I played that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Definition_Compatible_Dig...
| JohnBooty wrote:
| "High-definition" audio for consumers is essentially a scam.
| The original 44.1khz/16bit redbook CD audio standard already
| exceeds the limits of human hearing.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190606054038/https://people.xi...
|
| (For professional use, having more resolution/depth is useful,
| because you may be performing lossy operations, etc)
| Blueskytech wrote:
| While the gist of your argument is technically correct you
| are missing one important factor, amplification wether
| through solid state transistor or analog tubes, causes
| distortion. With 44.1 kHz all sine waves above 22 kHz cannot
| be reproduced which makes for some pretty unpleasant
| distortion harmonics if those wave forms are being fed
| through the wire without a filter on the output signal.
| lostgame wrote:
| It runs DOOM.
|
| https://www.nuon-dome.com/doom.html
| rbanffy wrote:
| From the Wikipedia article, it looks like a pretty interesting
| architecture.
| tcgv wrote:
| For reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuon_(DVD_technology)
| vslira wrote:
| > The Japanese manufacturers were not comfortable with firmware
| updates. "They didn't want the computer experience to be
| transferred to consumer electronics," Ram said. And that extended
| not just to updates but also to error handling--"If something
| goes wrong there's got to be a way to flash the firmware quickly
| and restore it to the last best-known state"--and startup times.
| Toshiba expected things to just work.
|
| Love the spirit
| moftz wrote:
| Prior to the sixth-gen consoles, there were no firmware
| updates. What made it out the door was it. I don't know if the
| PS2 or Dreamcast ever received software updates but the
| original Xbox included updates with newer games. Seventh-gen
| received online updates constantly. Toshiba was clearly just
| looking at what had come previously and didn't want to buck the
| trend.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think the Nuon did change the world, inasmuch as it influenced
| the PS2 to have a DVD player; I assume Katsuragi had to burn some
| serious social capital to push that through...
| moftz wrote:
| The PS2 was basically the inverse of the plan for Nuon. The PS2
| was a gaming device first and a DVD player second. Adding the DVD
| playback feature really got it into many of homes as the first
| DVD player for the household. If someone was just looking for a
| DVD player, why would they opt for the more expensive Nuon-
| enabled device than the cheaper DVD-only device? The only people
| that would have bought a Nuon-enabled DVD player would have been
| first adopters looking to actually buy a Nuon. Perhaps Nuon would
| have had more success selling a console that happened to play
| DVDs rather than a DVD player that happened to play games. Sony
| repeated the same strategy for the PS3 as a console that played
| Blu-rays and had immediate success with that too.
|
| It's like trying to sell a commuter car with a souped up engine
| next to the cheaper commuter cars. Someone buying a commuter car
| just wants 4 wheels and an engine at a low cost. Sony sold
| affordable sports cars that just so happened to be capable of
| commuting.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > first DVD player for the household
|
| True for me, I bet PS2s and PS3s are now the _last_ DVD players
| in a lot of households too!
| pixelbath wrote:
| I bought a PS2 because I didn't have a DVD player and wanted
| a PS2 anyway, so it was a slam dunk. I never bought a
| dedicated DVD player because I always had a PS2 or PC that
| could play it. It was the same with PS3 and my Blu-Ray laptop
| as well.
| lostgame wrote:
| I often blame the Dreamcast's lack of DVD support as its
| ultimate reason SEGA failed in the hardware console with an
| otherwise unbelievably innovative piece of hardware and
| incredibly strong software.
|
| Even a DC pro priced at $100 more or whatever might have
| done the trick to have SEGA in the door first.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| This is a video of a complete playthrough of every game released
| for the Nuon, with commentary: https://youtu.be/lfqiwg-wQB8
|
| There is a reason they did not sell.
| kkaranth wrote:
| I had one of these! It came along with a fun little game called
| Merlin Racing, a sort of proto-Mario Kart
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Super Mario Kart came out in 1992, predating Merlin Racing by
| 7-8 years...
| bsenftner wrote:
| I remember these people from my time in the game industry. They
| were very, very bright.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| If only they could have gotten this to market a couple of years
| earlier! Sounds like the tech itself was ready. It would have
| had something like class-leading performance.
| bsder wrote:
| It did. It was called 3DO. They failed, too. They were too
| early and so were too expensive because of the CD.
|
| The PS2 got the price and performance timing _exactly_ right
| --and they are tied together.
|
| The Crash Bandicoot writeup talks about how they had to work
| around the graphics (triangle limits) and hardware (cycling
| the CD a lot more than expected) limits of the device.
|
| That meant that the PS2 had juuust enough horsepower to do
| interesting things but still be affordable. That was a
| difficult needle to thread back then.
| twoodfin wrote:
| It sounds like the marketing was all wrong. They wanted to
| sell it as a premium feature for DVD players, but consumers
| shopping for a DVD player weren't interested in a pricey
| upsell to play a tiny number of games and whatever other
| features they bundled.
|
| What they should have done was position it as a premium games
| machine that included a "free" DVD player. Sony had massive
| success with this approach for the PlayStation 2, which I
| would guess was the first DVD player that most of its
| purchasers had owned.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _consumers shopping for a DVD player weren 't interested in
| a pricey upsell to play a tiny number of games_
|
| Yeah, people found this out in 1993 via the Pioneer
| LaserActive [0].
|
| Nuon's angle was a little different though. They were
| trying to _triple_ dip with licensing - license to the
| companies who make DVD players, the devs who make
| videogames as well as to movie studios for the DVD
| interactive features. That way, maybe they solve the
| problem of having to sell their own hardware at a loss to
| make it up in game sales (as most console makers do).
| Nintendo had done something like this in the past,
| licensing out their hardware to Sharp, who made the Twin
| Famicom and a TV with an NES built-in and would do it
| around the same time with the Panasonic Q GameCube.
|
| It looks like they did the work in terms of getting in good
| with the hardware side, but the software side left a lot to
| be desired. As close as they were working with Toshiba,
| they should've also been working with EA...
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserActive
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-27 23:02 UTC)