VGA-TV II, VGA-TV GE/O, Publishers' Color     video/graphics
Willow Shows Video Products at Comdex
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
At last week'sComdex in Las Vegas, Willow Peripherals introduced
VGA-TV II and VGA-TV GE/O, two multifunction cards that output
from a PC to video. The VGA-TV II is board-switchable between 8
and 16 bits. It lets you work with resolutions as high as 1024 by
768. It outputs to video in two resolutions higher than the
original card: 720 by 480 and 256 colors, and 768 by 483 and 256
colors.
 
VGA-TV GE/O goes two steps further than VGA-TV II, according to
Willow, by providing genlocking and overlay capabilities to the
PC. This lets you synchronize and overlay PC graphics on live
video. GE/O has a writeable key register to pick from the 256
possible colors for the video to show through. You also have a
choice of color kill and noninterlace mode output when in NTSC
mode.
 
VGA-TV II and VGA-TV GE/O will work with any VGA monitor or
with a television. To operate the output capabilities, you
can hook up a television, VCR, or monitor to the RCA jack at
the back of the board.
 
The boards are compatible with EGA and CGA, and are register
and BIOS-compatible with IBM PCs and compatibles with DOS 2.0
or higher. The boards  come with software drivers that conform
to Windows, GEM, AutoCad, and AutoShade, according to Willow.
 
Willow also introduced Publishers' Color, a color frame grabber,
at Comdex. The stand-alone frame grabber lets you display video
input at VGA resolutions and capture color frames in 1/30th of a
second, according to Willow. The frame grabber can work with
VGA-TV to grab color video images in VGA resolutions to create
video tapes by outputting VGA in broadcast-quality NTSC from the
PC to a television or VCR.
 
Publishers' Color captures up to eight low-resolution pictures or
two high-resolution pictures in real time. It digitizes the image
in 1/60th or 1/30th second, and you can save the file in 8- or
16-bit in a variety of formats to be used with other paint and
graphics programs.
 
All three products are scheduled to ship January 1, l990.
 
Price: VGA-TV II, $795; VGA-TV GE/O, $895; Publishers' Color,
$895.
 
Contact: Willow Peripherals, 190 Willow Ave., Bronx, NY 10454,
(212) 402-0010.
 
                              --- Anne F. Lent
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
