Date   : Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:53:10 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!

Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-03-06 at 16:10 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:
>> Not sure what to use for the controlling machine as I'd like a camera hooked 
>> up to it - so it needs something that'll process an image and spit the 
>> relevant chunks out to each beeb in a reasonable amount of time. Gotta be 
>> something vintage too, of course.
> 
> Master 512?  I knew there'd be a use for the 80186 some day.

Hmm, too slow to have a camera hooked up to it producing colour images and 
then reducing colour depth / dithering [1] before splitting into chunks and 
farming off to each BBC for subsequent display.

[1] Given that I only have 8 colours to play with, I'm pondering using 4 
on-screen pixels for each camera pixel and doing some sort of dithering to 
give the effect of more colours on the beeb. Also has the benefit of reducing 
the amount of raw data that I need to send to each beeb from the controller 
(given the nature of image data, compression probably won't have any benefits)

I'm suspecting that the controller needs to be pretty pokey - maybe a RiscPC 
or somesuch. (how to actually attach a camera is still a total unknown, which 
may mean I'm better off with something like an SGI Indy)

cheers

J.