COMPUTER & TV SCREENS MERGE 

Ever since computers with their digitalized screens started to change our world, a big impediment to merging computers and television was their different power cycles and frequencies. It was like mixing monkeys and marigolds, although with biogenetic manipulation that is probably now possible.

Now a relatively low-cost, computer board which transfers television, in digitalized form, to the computer screen has been developed. Once there anything becomes possible. Previously this was only possible with very, expensive genlock and image capture devices. The new unit sells for US$995.

Desktop video developers, software image producers and everyday computer buffs have a whole new world at their fingertips. They can now juggle pictures like they've been juggling words and numbers. Pictured here is the new -- DIGIVIDEO from the Aapps Corporation. It can handle both NTSC and PAL formats.

Why does your kid positively have to have this? Unless you are parents who don't mind if offspring are classified as electroniclydeprived and are living at home until they're 30 because they can't get a job with industrial age training, better wake up. DIGIVIDEO will be part of the desktop video industry of the future. It will make desktop publishing, which has mushroomed over the past three years, look like a welfare line.

What can DIGIVIDEO do? The possibilities are numerous. When the first Apple computer arrived, no one imagined the miracles it would be performing today. When such inventions are exposed in the field, startling innovations develop.

Take security at a large warehouse or condo development. Closedcircuit cameras around the complex monitor entries. When someone shows up, his or her picture can be matched with computer data file pictures of who they claim to be and the visual profile can be verified or rejected almost instantly.

Training and learning applications can use DIGIVIDEO Color to provide video-based input (from either, VHF/UHF signals, satellite, VCR, videocamera or videodisc) by allowing any frame from any TV transmission to be incorporated into a written or visual production. Video conferencing can use freeze-frame pictures transmitted via ordinary phone lines to any other computer so equipped, allowing voice, picture, print to go on (apparently) simultaneously. Any picture, in color or black and white, can be captured -- and saved on a clipboard -- merely by hitting the space bar. Such controls as "Power", "Color", "Sharpness, "Fine Tuning", "Brightness" etc. appear on the screen with slide controls like a normal TV set, only the movements are controlled either by the mouse or coded keys. A Hypercard stack is sent to owners upon receipt of their warranty card.

Video-based information retrieval systems can be accessed and visuals can be placed in personal data bases. Image databases can provide a wide range of photos for research projects which can be stored for future use. Although DIGIVIDEO is a huge step forward, it is not yet appropriate for full-screen graphics. But that will follow.

It does display full-motion video, with selection for two sizes of screens ... in 256 colors or 128 shades of gray. It contains an onboard (99 channel) tuner with composite and direct video inputs plus on-screen controls for channels, volume and picture quality.

As a computer part, the DIGIVIDEO should cross the border duty free but is subject to the Canadian 13.5 percent manufacturer's tax on imports. More information: Louise Kohl, Director of Corporate Communications, Aapps Corporation, 756 North Pastoria Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94086.

Phone: 408/735-8550.

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