Commodore CDTV
Released
March 1991
by
Commodore Business Machines
Gaming platform
Commodore introduced the CDTV in early 1991 in an attempt to leverage the technology of their Amiga line of home computers into a console designed for the living room. It ended up being a pre-cursor to other multimedia home systems like the 3DO, the Philips CD-i or Commodore's own Amiga CD³².
From a hardware point of view, the CDTV unit used the components of an Amiga 500 with the addition of a CDROM drive and a remote control. It had the same graphic and audio capabilities as an Amiga, but the addition of a CDROM drive allowed for additional multimedia capabilities. The addition of a floppy disk drive, keyboard and mouse allowed CDTV owners to upgrade to a full Amiga computer. Commodore also introduced its CDXL codec along with the CDTV which supported playing video from the CDROM and a few titles used it to incorporate full motion video sequences. Unfortunately, most games for the CDTV ended up being simple Amiga ports, sometimes with the addition of soundtracks in standard Red Book CD audio on the same CD as the game. The CD audio was separate from the main system to the extent that some titles even allowed gamers to insert a standard CD and have their own soundtrack play in the background.
The CDTV was designed to be booted from the media CDs so rather than the system shipping with a standalone version of the operating system, each game title was distributed with an older version of AmigaOS 1.3 as a runtime. This limited the usability of the CDTV as a general computer out of the box without the purchase of additional peripherals for the already expensive console. Commodore also marketed the CDTV heavily towards existing Commodore owners who largely preferred to wait for a CDROM drive for their Amiga and play CD titles that way rather than buying a separate console. All of these decisions as well as general customer disinterest in home multimedia consoles dovetailed to limit the appeal of the CDTV and Commodore discontinued production in 1993 as they brought out its replacement, the equally short-lived Amiga CD³².
From a hardware point of view, the CDTV unit used the components of an Amiga 500 with the addition of a CDROM drive and a remote control. It had the same graphic and audio capabilities as an Amiga, but the addition of a CDROM drive allowed for additional multimedia capabilities. The addition of a floppy disk drive, keyboard and mouse allowed CDTV owners to upgrade to a full Amiga computer. Commodore also introduced its CDXL codec along with the CDTV which supported playing video from the CDROM and a few titles used it to incorporate full motion video sequences. Unfortunately, most games for the CDTV ended up being simple Amiga ports, sometimes with the addition of soundtracks in standard Red Book CD audio on the same CD as the game. The CD audio was separate from the main system to the extent that some titles even allowed gamers to insert a standard CD and have their own soundtrack play in the background.
The CDTV was designed to be booted from the media CDs so rather than the system shipping with a standalone version of the operating system, each game title was distributed with an older version of AmigaOS 1.3 as a runtime. This limited the usability of the CDTV as a general computer out of the box without the purchase of additional peripherals for the already expensive console. Commodore also marketed the CDTV heavily towards existing Commodore owners who largely preferred to wait for a CDROM drive for their Amiga and play CD titles that way rather than buying a separate console. All of these decisions as well as general customer disinterest in home multimedia consoles dovetailed to limit the appeal of the CDTV and Commodore discontinued production in 1993 as they brought out its replacement, the equally short-lived Amiga CD³².
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