Commodore 64 Primed For a Comeback In June 330
angry tapir writes "The Commodore 64 is getting a makeover, with a new design and some of the latest computing technologies, as the brand gets primed for a comeback. The revamped computer will be available through the Commodore USA online store, which is set to open June 1. The computer will be an all-in-one keyboard, with Intel's 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities."
Clear Hoax (Score:5, Insightful)
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Look. at. the. site.
Trying. I think it's dead Jim.
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Re:Clear Hoax (Score:5, Funny)
Sustaining six connections per minute is all a C64 can do. No wonder it's slashdotted.
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You'd probably have little doubt that the site is genuine, if you simply examined it further. It really is rather pathetic -- they're looking for people to only purchase this slapped together crap for nostalgia's sake.
No news story here folks, just another company trying to peddle something no one will buy.
Re:Clear Hoax (Score:5, Insightful)
It really is rather pathetic -- they're looking for people to only purchase this slapped together crap for nostalgia's sake.
In that case, other than the nostalgia angle, I think they've captured the fundamental essence of Commodore marketing perfectly.
-- idontgno, a still-frustrated-after-all-these-years Amiga partisan
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Look. at. the. site. It's a chinese 3rd rate gadget imitator wet dream. There is a pseudo-configuration page vaguely mimicking Dell's one with no functionality. No logo. No design. and GOD that heinous thing in the pictures looks CLUNKY and CHEAP. This is a hoax. /. have seen several in the past years tied to the good old C64. I'm very surprised it made the front page :(
I think it is legit enough. Commodore USA is a registered company in the United States, and their site is quite clearly commodoreusa.net
The actual issue is not so much that it looks like a hoax, but that it is so endlessly poorly carried out. It's pathetic! It's like watching Birdemic [wikipedia.org] , a product that tries to itself seriously, while everyone around it is laughing (and possibly crying a little inside).
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The actual issue is not so much that it looks like a hoax, but that it is so endlessly poorly carried out.
I would tend to agree. But the original C64 was poorly carried out, too, so this as a nostalgia product has some merit.
Now, before people roll out of the shag carpeting to rage at me, the C64 was an inexpensive and well marketed, but technically second rate product. I mean, they put a whole second 6502-type processor in the disk drive and set the machine up to read/write from the disk over a pokey-do
Re:Clear Hoax (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect that you had no first-hand experience with the 64, or that you experience was well after its heyday. When introduced, the 64 was more capable than most of its competitors and lower-priced as well. Remember, we are talking about a machine that occupied store shelves unchanged (save for cosmetic and cost reductions) for over a decade. By the time home users of any machine were considering hard drives, the C64's day was long-since over. At launch, its graphics were among the top available and its sound capabilities blew absolutely everything in the consumer market out of the water. Yes, the serial disk interface was slow even by 1982 standards, but only as an early example of a company opting for backwards compatibility over performance. The fast loader programs and cartridges didn't do some kind of magic, or fix a bug that Commodore let ship for 11 years; They simply rewrote the disk drive code to favor speed over compatibility with old PET systems.
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> When introduced, the 64 was more capable than most of its competitors and lower-priced as well.
1. And all those expansion slots on the C64 are where again? Where was your 80x25 text again?
2. It may be hard for you to take off the rose-colored history glasses. Let's take a look at the facts: The Apple I and Apple ][ open slot architecture and daughterboards spawned serial cards, parallel cards, modems, CPU daughter boards (could YOUR C64 host a Z80?), sound cards, voice (Echo I) cards, mouse, floppy d
Re:Clear Hoax (Score:5, Funny)
Oh christ..did we run in to a rip in the fabric of space/time? We're having a C64/AppleII/Atari 400/800 flamewar?
Re:Clear Hoax (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't say it's a hoax... This keyboard PC has been on the market for years. This company [cybernetman.com] sells it as the ZPC (for Zero-footprint PC).
Frankly, I wondered why it took so long for someone to decide to rebadge one as a Commodore. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it.
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Made in China?
"They took our jobs!" :)
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apparently timothy is picking up kdawson's slack.
Not hoax, but rebranding of existing product. (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, compare these two pictures: Zero Footprint PC [cybernetman.com] and "new" Commodore 64 [commodoreusa.net]. Looks similar?
Re:Clear Hoax (Score:4, Informative)
Don't get too impressed with yourself. You missed the obvious part. Look at the filename.
http://www.commodoreusa.net/i//zpc9100_full.jpg [commodoreusa.net]
It's over 3 years old, and has nothing to do with Commodore, except someone set up a crappy site with the name on it to get the Commodore fans all wound up.
A 2007 article about the ZPC9100 [pclaunches.com]
Or the real manufacturer site [cybernetman.com]
I'm not surprised it was shot with an expensive camera, the *REAL* manufacturer had those done by a professional, I'm sure.
Any of the rest of the crap in the summary or on their site can be assumed to be absolute BS. But hey, for those interested I have a 16 core 4THz machine with 32TB RAM that's the size of a matchhead. It runs off of a patented method for gathering and storing static electricity from the air, and interfaces to all external devices (display, HID, etc) wirelessly. I'll start selling them for $1,950,000. If I sell one I can move to a nice island. If I sell 1000 I'll buy the island. Err, I mean, ummm, we'll reinvest in the company to make our products even better. :)
64-bit?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it's not a Commodore 64, it's just a modern product trying to cash in on the famous name.
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Or a port for my 1541 drive.
-dZ.
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Bonus points to the first person that can rip an mp3/flac from an old cassette and get the program to load.
-- gid
Re:64-bit?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Bonus points to the first person that can rip an mp3/flac from an old cassette and get the program to load.
Has anyone ever done that? Come to think of it, since MP3 discards audio outside of human hearing ranges, would it even work? I suppose that since (usually by limiting to 9600bps or so) you can get a fax machine to work on a VoIP line, this could work as well though.
:D
That'd be really neat/useless, feeding MP3 files to a c64 emulator to load applications.
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Has anyone ever done that? Come to think of it, since MP3 discards audio outside of human hearing ranges, would it even work? I suppose that since (usually by limiting to 9600bps or so) you can get a fax machine to work on a VoIP line, this could work as well though.
Not sure about the commodore, but the BBC frequently used a rate of about 2400bps - and since when was audio tape a suitable medium to store audio outside of human hearing ranges?
Re:64-bit?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Have you forgotten that cassette tapes only recorded *within* human hearing ranges?
I didn't forget that, I just didn't know it. As an analog device, I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why such devices wouldn't record outside of human hearing ranges, but I honestly don't know the specifics of how analog tape works, other than "Sound > Mic > Electricity > Tape Head > Magnetism > Magnetized Tape."
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As an analog device, I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why such devices wouldn't record outside of human hearing ranges
It's rather simple, really; even analogue devices have a maximum 'resolution'. For film, this is the graininess. For tape, there's a certain magnetic response time.
Imagine, if you will, a nice 440Hz waveform; this is stored as a nicely wavy pattern in the magnetic particles. Well, if you were to store a 0.01Hz signal, there just wouldn't be enough offset, inch-by-inch, to detect it (that is to say, generate a magnetic current) when playing back (at normal speeds, anyway). In the opposite case, the wave patt
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I managed to transfer some Acorn Electron tapes onto audio CDs once, and was also able to speed up the loading time by reducing the long "padding" beeps between the blocks (which I'm sure have a proper name..)
Oddly enough there was one tape that it just would not work with - though it loaded fine directly from the tape, so goodness knows what strange analogue copy protection had been implemented.
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Already done, though I didn't use a C= 64, I used a Z-80 training board.
I can haz +1 internets?
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Bonus points to the first person that can rip an mp3/flac from an old cassette and get the program to load.
tests show that there is no real difference between square and sine waveforms in terms of MP3 packing. WAVs with 3675 bps can be packed as 128 kbps MP3, those with 5512.5 - at 192 kbps (of course, at max quality and with frequency filters switched off). [cax.nm.ru] That's for MSX though. But if the bitrate is not too high, then it ought to work.
Re:64-bit?! (Score:5, Funny)
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A Commodore In Name Only (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says it's an Intel x86 based machine running Windows. The only thing Commodore about this thing is that it's built in to an oversized PC-style keyboard, and even that's a stretch. This is a Commodore in name only.
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TFA says it's an Intel x86 based machine running Windows.
That's interesting. I didn't know you could run Windows with 64K of RAM.
GEOS (Score:3, Interesting)
That's interesting. I didn't know you could run Windows with 64K of RAM.
You can't, unless you count GEOS [wikipedia.org]. That's why the 64 in this stands for a 64-bit CPU, like the Nintendo 64.
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Because most of the millions of people who bought a C64 don't know or care about what happened with the Amiga. Adolf, on the other handm doesn't have any nostalgic associations for most people, and his ignoble legacy is a little better known, so your comparison is a bit of a stretch.
And according to corollaries to Godwin's Law: you lose. :)
This is not a C64 at all (Score:2)
The computer will be an all-in-one keyboard, with Intel's 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities.
So how is it a C64 then? I bet it doesn't even have 64K of RAM.
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So how is it a C64 then? I bet it doesn't even have 64K of RAM.
Because they expect to sell 64 units ?
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I already have one (Score:5, Funny)
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At first it wouldn't boot, but blowing on the cartridge contacts worked a treat.
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My car is a Commodore 64. It is also a George Foreman Grill.
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That's nothing, I just put an Apple sticker on my C=64 and now it's a Mac.
-dZ.
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I have an apple sticker on my red dell mini 9 running OSX. I still have people asking where I got the red apple laptop at. They cannot find it at the apple store.
I so want to go to the apple store and just to see the sale people's faces when someone asks for a red (or any other color) apple laptop.
Another comeback? (Score:2)
Good thing Frank Sinatra's not alive to see this...
Riding the back of nostalgia. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, the C64 was a fantastic machine in its time. But that was the 1980s. Commodore hasn't been in the public consciousness for nearly two decades (the last Amigas from Commodore - the 1200 and 4000T - ceased production in 1996, if Wikipedia can be trusted). They're planning an all-in-one keyboard computer, just like the original C64, and I can pretty much guarantee: it'll flop. The design had good reason back in the 80s, but not so much now - they're banking upon the name driving sales, but I suspect a lo
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Re:Riding the back of nostalgia. (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why your generation sucks at programming.
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As one who did programme back then (and earlier), I can assure you that his generation sucks no more or less than did the older generation; just in different ways.
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The older generation have a lot more experience when it comes to sucking. Lack of teeth also helps.
Re:Riding the back of nostalgia. (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but us C64 programmers could, like, totally suck in only 39K of RAM - this generation needs at least 512MB just to load up suckage.dll
Re:Riding the back of nostalgia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post makes me sad on two levels; first that at 25 I'm no longer part of the younger generation (nearly everyone my age has seen/used a C64 at least in their early grades of primary school); and secondly because there are poor people out there who have never had a chance to use one.
Limited pfft: POKE, PEEK, and 64k is all anyone will ever need.
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Most of the younger generation (such as my self) has either never heard of C64 or never used one. I've never used one of these machines before; I might be interested in getting a modern remake if it was just as limited as the original, just to see how far we've come since that time period, but the brand means very little to me in a modern computer. The all-in-one design would be very hard for me to use on a day to day basis because of my desk arrangement, and the same applies to many of my friends' desks as well. I concur that this will flop.
Presumably, if you were to get such a device, you would move your existing computer elsewhere . . .
For that matter, I see people of all ages using "all-in-one" computers every day. They call them laptops, notebooks, netbooks, etc. And these are even "all-in-oner" than a keyboard/computer with separate monitor like this "Commodore" sounds like -- haven't seen it, site is Slashdotted.
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Re:Riding the back of nostalgia. (Score:5, Informative)
Unless the latest outfit wearing a mask made from Commodore's flayed face is simply stealing clip art, what they are selling is a simple rebadge of Cybernet's "ZPC" [cybernetman.com]. Those things have been around at least since the P4 was the face of "intel inside" possibly earlier. Unless Cybernet is an ass about small quantities or something, there is absolutely no reason to order from some fly-by-night rebadge house; but the product is real enough, and presumably has enough of a niche(probably space constrained POS applications and similar) to justify the engineering costs of shoving a laptop motherboard into a keyboard housing for the past few generations of x86 hardware.
What's the point?? (Score:2)
Really, what's the point.
Well, I had a Commodore 64 (or was it a Vic=20, never knew the difference and I was barely old enough to use it)
The age of different consumer computer archs is over, unfortunatelly, gone with the last Apple PPC. It made sense on those days, but now...
I don't see the point of grabbing a PC and slapping a C64 sticker on it. At least it should come with a C64 emulator :P :P
Not really a comeback (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously: what does this have to do with the old 8bit microcomputer?
And yes... it does run Linux, sadly...
Those wishing to a Commodore 64 should look elsewhere [c64upgra.de] (or Ellsworth - haha, lame I know...)
Ummm....yes! (Score:2, Troll)
You can do all that with a C64 emulator, yes.
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It runs a crappy excuse for an operating system made by Microsoft. So in that way it is very similar to the old 64.
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They could have put an emulator on and do all this.
I kind of wish someone would create a mythical NextGen C64. Kind of what Commodore might have made if they had made a better C128.
Imagine a 65816 CPU and an HD64180 to replace the z80 .
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>Yes, in a suitable emulator.
Then just get a free emulator such as VICE or Frodo, that more than capable of running on even a 486DX2.
Using PEEK or POKE from a BASIC prompt is at least an order of magnitude easier and more straightforward that messing with around with a kernel debugger of a such a massive operating system such as GNU/Linux. To replicate the Commodore experience you'd need a very stripped down and moderately powerful machine that boots direct
Not Commodore 64 (Score:3, Informative)
It's called the "Phoenix". "Commodore" is just the brand.
A computer of rank! (Score:3, Funny)
which is set to open June 1 (Score:2)
this reminds me of Acorn (Score:3, Interesting)
Slap a familiar [UK] logo on a Wintel [acorncomputers.co.uk]
Upgrades? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the commodoreusa website:
There’s nothing like it. At just 17.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it’s designed to take up far less room — and use far less energy — than any other desktop computer.
So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit. All the upgrade inconvenience of a laptop with none of the advantages.
Re:Upgrades? (Score:5, Funny)
So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit.
Hmm... now that you put it that way, it kinda does resemble the original C64 after all.
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There's nothing like it. At just 17.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it's designed to take up far less room -- and use far less energy -- than any other desktop computer.
So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit. All the upgrade inconvenience of a laptop with none of the advantages.
Seems more like an updated Amiga 600HD to me. A600 was 14x9.5"x3" and weighed about 6 lbs (with a big goofy external power supply whereon lies the switch... ugh.) 'Course, that had a 68000...
Are they using original C64s... (Score:5, Funny)
... to host their website?
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E-Mail From America (Score:2)
I could still see the dust of the pick-up trucks carrying Dell computers out of my village and some friends and I went and dug through the PS3, XBox 360 and Wii cables by the LCD TV where I had hid the computer. T
The C64, an eulogy (Score:5, Insightful)
By sparking the low-cost microcomputer revolution of the eighties, he prepared a whole generation to the modern digital age.
Jack Tramiel's Wikipedia entry. [wikipedia.org]
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I'd like to say that Jack Tramiel is the unsung hero of the personal computer [snip] By sparking the low-cost microcomputer revolution of the eighties, he prepared a whole generation to the modern digital age.
10 PRINT "THANK YOU JACK TRAMIEL"
20 GOTO 10
If it wasn't for the C64 I'd probably have never gotten into this stuff. God only knows what I would've wasted the years as a teenager on.
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Tramiel was an ass, though. Sure, his contribution to the end effect was good, but talk about mistreatment of engineers. If you want unsung heroes, let's mention Bob Yannes and Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble.
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He advocated a computer 'for the classes, not for the masses'.
Jack Tramiel's Wikipedia entry. [wikipedia.org]
Um... wiki article says:
It was during this time period that he coined the famous phrase, "We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes."
Re:The C64, an eulogy (Score:4, Informative)
Jack Tramiel may be an unsung hero of the personal computer, but he also had the dubious distinction of playing key roles in the destruction of two of the most important computer companies of the era, Commodore and later, Atari.
Tramiel - and more importantly, his engineers - is often left out in the modern retelling of the personal computer story, which is often presented as if everything that wasn't Intel, Microsoft, and Apple was some sort of bizarre tangental experiment that really didn't matter. Sadly, his management style was typical of the small-minded businessman, who treated his company as a fief and a playground for his personal grudges.
I often wonder how the Amiga would have fared long-term if a more competently-managed company than Commodore had bought it.
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Tramiel did try to buy out project Lorraine from Hi-Toro, but Commodore managed to land the deal (and 'f*ck up' the machine, as a famous Workbench easter egg recited).
By the way, long live Jay Miner [wikipedia.org], Commodore's Steve Wozniak.
Nope, not a commodore (Score:4, Insightful)
load "*",8,1
to start software, it isn't commodore 64. Case closed.
Looks just like a ZPC to me (Score:2, Informative)
What it really is (Score:5, Insightful)
Casemod.
nothing more, nothing less. a Wintel-PC with funny hat.
A long time ago (Score:2)
I had a C+64 once. It was the 4th computer I bought.
This is simply a Cybernet ZPC-GX31 system (Score:3, Informative)
Circa March 2008:
http://www.cybernetman.com/en/products/zero-footprint-pc/zpc-gx31.cfm [cybernetman.com]
They even reused the stock footage.
Should cost at least $700, according to Gizmodo Australia:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/03/cybernet_zpcgx31_a_pc_in_a_keyboardsized_case-2/ [gizmodo.com.au]
Good luck slipping that kit... (Score:3, Funny)
ALL HAIL CLIVE SINCLAIR!
Other old-name mis-use (Score:2)
Mike Tyson makes comeback, regains title! (Score:2)
It's about time. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm ready to see this form factor start to get deployed again. Now that the typical desktop computer doesn't have quite as many cables coming out of it as it did a few years ago, it's time.
It claims OS X support? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you go to the company's website, on the link in the article, they claim it will run OS X. Interesting to see how quickly Apple's lawyers move in for the kill
Oh, and I submitted this story to Slashdot a week ago. Tsk.
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I am not interested. What's the difference between this and all the other all-in-one computers out there? The fact that the CPU is in the keyboard instead of the monitor? Who cares...?
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If it doesn't run EasyScript, I'm not interested. That was so cool: you could embed printer control codes into your documents, to turn on bold and underline and italics! Even superscript and subscript (if your printer could do that... mine did!)
To be fair, an "all-in-one" that puts the CPU in the keyboard can be handier than the iMac approach: it's a lot easier to carry from place to place and hook up to whatever monitor is handy.
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True, but at that point, why not just get a netbook, and be able to use it without an external monitor if you so choose?
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"will run the Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems."
Apple vs. Psystar ended with a $30,000 fine for copying MacOS X per se without permission ($30,000 for an unlimited number of copies, RIAA take note), plus $2500 for each individual case of DMCA violation (that is $2500 per each single copy put on a non-Apple branded computer that actually works; that's the expensive part). And if the machine is just _capable_ of running unmodified MacOS X, that is already a DMCA violation, whether the company or an end user installs the OS or not.
Re:Pick your OS flavor? (Score:5, Informative)
Lawyers.
HDTVs with VGA input (Score:3, Interesting)
At least if it had come with a HDMI port to be by default attached to a HDTV, then it would be closer to the Commodre 64 legacy.
Almost any PC since 1987 can be connected to a TV because most HDTVs sold where I live have a VGA input. But the original C64 also competed with the NES as a game console; how will the new C64 compete with the Xbox 360?
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Still, I wonder why it's VGA input. Why not DVI?
TVs tend to have both VGA and HDMI inputs. But a lot of computers, especially netbooks and the like, have room for only one output.
HDMI seems to be present on all HDTVs, but not DVI... I wonder why...
Because HDMI is signal-compatible with DVI, and a cable from a computer's DVI output to a TV's HDMI input is under $10 on Amazon.
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Hmmmm.. Wonder if it's backwards compatible..??
VICE [wikipedia.org] should answer that question handily.
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