On TV: The Set-Top Morphing PowerPC

Bandai Digital's @World Web-browsing system may one day be the Mac network computer for corporations.

Peter Wayner

A Macintosh with only 5 MB of RAM and a 66-MHz PowerPC 603 processor hardly seems exciting. Set it on a TV with an Internet hookup, however, and a $499 Mac clone begins to make great sense. Based on Apple's Pippin technology, Bandai Digital's @World runs software from its internal CD-ROM or the Internet. It's a well-implemented unit that should infiltrate the set-top-box market and might even steal market share from games manufacturers, such as Nintendo.

Portability is @World's great strength. Stripped of multitasking code, its lean Mac OS fits in 1 MB of RAM. Yet all the standard Toolbox calls are available, incl uding such popular extensions as QuickTime and QuickDraw, so Mac applications run with few modifications. As a result, software for @World should be easy to come by. The @World unit itself comes w ith a slightly retooled version of the Spyglass Internet browser, and its flashy introductory CD was produced with Macromedia and QuickTime, two well-understood multimedia tools.

The unit's Mac compatibility extends to hardware. You can connect standard Apple ink-jet printers, keyboards, and mice to @World, although Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) devices require an adapter. The @World unit is also networkable, running AppleTalk through its serial port.

The graphics subsystem, however, differs from that of a basic Mac. The unit spits out a video signal in standard NTSC, S-video, or standard VGA. The display on NTSC TV has fewer pixels than on a color monitor, but antialiasing hardware keeps the image readably crisp.

The game-like interface controller has a trackball for manipulat ing the mouse pointer and a four-position button for standard video action. Nine other buttons must be programmed for a particular application. An optional $69 keyboard lets you type e-mail or enter Web addresses. Without it, you have to "type" on a screen keyboard using the trackball.

The @World unit comes with a 28.8-Kbps Motorola modem and cables for setting up a Web browser. As an option, Bandai provides its own Internet service (AtWorld.Net), which costs $19.95 per month. I had the browser up and running within 20 minutes.

Bandai is targeting the retail set-top market for starters, but the company also has plans for the corporate desktop. With a VGA monitor and the optional keyboard, @World would make a perfect $750 network-computer workstation sitting on an AppleTalk network.

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Where to Find

@World....................................$499

 (with 66-MHz PowerPC 603, 5 MB of RAM, 
  quad-speed CD-ROM, 28.8-K
bps modem, 
  cables, and browser software)
Bandai Digital Entertainment Corp.
La Mirada, CA
Phone:    (310) 404-1600
Fax:      (310) 404-1900
Internet: 
http://www.atworld.com/

Circle 1057 on Inquiry Card.

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Ratings

Technology        ***
Implementation    *****


Key

***** Outstanding
**** Very Good
*** Good
** Fair
* Poor

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@World Web PC

photo_link (85 Kbytes)

Housed around a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, Bandai's @World Web PC runs modified Mac software. The keyboard is optional.

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Peter Wayner is a BYTE consulting editor who lives in Baltimore. You can reach him by sending e-mail to pcw@access.digex.net .