On 30/12/2025 00:08, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
There are quite a few acronyms, now long forgotten, which were bandied
around a lot back in the day, when the technologies they represented
were new, exciting, and above all, still unusual enough to be worthy
of comment.
One of those from the early 1990s is ?FMV?, which is casually dropped, without explanation, at 1:28 in this video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxSCNhblC3g> on The 8-Bit Guy?s
channel, which is about the old Philips ?CD-i? (?Compact Disc
Interactive?) format.
It stands for ?Full Motion Video?. The idea of being able to watch
digital video clips at a decent resolution and frame rate on a regular
PC was still pretty cutting-edge at the time. The CD-i machines needed
a special add-in card, which was quite an expensive option, to achieve
this. The card had hardware designed for real-time decoding of MPEG-1,
which was the state of the art for video compression technology (at
least as intended for the mass market) at the time. And at 320?240 resolution, it was only considered to be about equivalent in overall
quality to VHS.
I recall being very excited getting our first CD-ROM drive to play Star
Wars Rebel Assault, although it's full potential didn't hit until Wing Commander III IMO.
I wonder if I had my Gravis Ultrasound by then?
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)