Date   : Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:33:28 -0600
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Acorn Interactive Video system

Does anyone here have one of these? Note that this *isn't* the Domesday 
system; it was earlier and initially used a BBC B for the computer (although I 
gather later on a Master was used instead). The Laserdisc player wasn't the 
venerable VP415 either, but it seems like user had a choice of a different 
Philips unit (possibly an 830 series) or some unknown Pioneer player.

There were no LVROM facilities; control software was loaded from floppy (or 
local ROM storage, presumably) rather than coming from the LV disc itself.

It sounds like Microtext Plus (NPL) was the favoured 'control' language, 
although it's not clear if that was purely for interactive apps created by end 
users, or commercial ones too.

No idea if the system contained a genlock or not, although I'm suspecting not. 
Launch date was October 1984, price circa ?3000.

(All of this gleaned from an unearthed A+B Computing article [1] about the 
Domesday system; I've got a flyer somewhere on the earlier IV system, but it's 
even lighter on details than the magazine article)

[1] Atop the scan pile right now as the mag's on loan - unless someone else 
has already done work on A+B magazine scans. There's a nice review in there on 
the Cumana 68008 copro which is the reason someone set it aside for me :-)

cheers

Jules