Keyboard Component Conversational French full playthrough

[+DZ-Jay]

10 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

 

It's really awesome to also see how things were priced back then:

• Master Component $269.95
• Keyboard Component $700.00
• Computer Program $50.00 - $70.00
• Game Cartridges $30.00

Note that that 1981 -> 2021 inflation means the KC alone would cost the equivalent of $2130 today.  Oy!

Yes, and also consider that the $700.00 was probably at a loss to Mattel in order to keep the FTC off their backs, since they needed it to be reasonably affordable to consumers.

 

The most surprising thing to me is the price of the Master Component.  It means that the console alone would cost about $821.00 USD today -- for a gaming console, yikes!

Edited November 21, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[+DZ-Jay]

Continuing with my French lessons, I have now learned he layout of my hotel room and the bathroom, and how to count money.

 

However, it's all in Francs!  I wonder if Mattel will release a patch for Euros?

 

    dZ.

 

P.S. Great stuff!  I'm loving this software.  It is very impressive, and I must say that Mimi's conversational French learning method is practical and effective.

[Walter Ives]

On 11/13/2021 at 12:08 PM, decle said:

... for me the most impressive content is the lip sync'd animation of Mimi.  I would have been blown away if I'd seen it running on a home machine in 1980. I know this is the case because I did see Dancing Demon at my local Radio Shack at around that time (it was written in 1979), and I thought that was really cool.  It should be noted that our videos probably don't do this animation justice.  There is quite a bit of wow and flutter on the recordings we're working from, which means the lip-sync wanders a bit.

As is usual in animation, the audio is recorded first and the animation created to sync to the audio. The audio master was SMPTE time-coded and the person marking the transition points could manually drag the tape slowly back and forth across the read head to obtain the time code of a phoneme to the nearest field. The data tracks were positioned using the SMPTE time code. On playback the pre-recorded data track serves as a time code track for the Keyboard, with a software PLL maintaining sync across inter-record gaps, so the synchronization between the animation and the audio should be as good as the operator's diligence in recording the phoneme times. If your emulation isn't serving streamed tape data the PLL is running open loop and you should be really impressed that the APh crew ensured that it works anyway.

The first version of Mimi's animation just had the lips moving. APh thought that was rather lifeless and so added the jaw movement. It thought the result still somewhat stilted. Then inspiration hit: by having the eyes blink occasionally they brought life to the whole face. Of course, if you can make both eyes blink you can, very occasionally, throw in a wink. Today you can stop your video and confirm what you saw, but back in 1980 users couldn't be quite sure…

 

On 11/19/2021 at 6:45 PM, mr_me said:

Regarding the Keyboard Component, internal Mattel documents describe Seattle and New Orleans in 1981 as "first markets".  I think they were reluctantly trying to show the FTC that distribution had started but had no intention of scaling up.

Nope. Mattel management was fully committed to the Keyboard Component until August 1982. When the decision was made to kill it, it was executed immediately and decisively.

 

On 11/20/2021 at 4:57 PM, Lathe26 said:

It's really awesome to also see how things were priced back then:

• Master Component $269.95
• Keyboard Component $700.00
• Computer Program $50.00 - $70.00
• Game Cartridges $30.00

Note that that 1981 -> 2021 inflation means the KC alone would cost the equivalent of $2130 today.  Oy!

The Keyboard Component was actually priced very competitively for the hardware it included. The unit cost a little over $500 to produce, but that was in line with its capabilities. Its $700 list price, which was far too low for what was being offered, was set before the manufacturing cost was accurately known. The public expected to pay well over $1,000 for a computer. The suggested retail price for the Atari 800, with 8k bytes of DRAM and an ordinary manually-operated cassette recorder was $999.99, and that was seen as a hobbyist's toy. https://books.google.com/books?id=4ODjVe3M21QC&pg=PA21 The Apple II Plus was selling for $1200 without any storage. The IBM PC was introduced in 1981 at $4,425 for the "standard configuration." https://books.google.com/books?id=dSMB0yE18cUC&pg=PA4 All of these sold very well despite their price.

It is true that Denham was aghast at the keyboard's manufacturing cost, but his comfort zone was manufacturing Barbie dolls that sold for $3.99 and he was operating more than a little bit outside of that paradigm. Spear and Wagner were floored when consumers proved willing to pay $35 for an electronic handheld football game, and again when they lined up to fork over $270 for a video game console. Management as a whole was similarly clueless when it came to the market for computers.

 

On 11/21/2021 at 3:42 AM, DZ-Jay said:

However, it's all in Francs!  I wonder if Mattel will release a patch for Euros?

Yup. It will be out in the spring. Right after the Y2K patch.

 

On 11/21/2021 at 3:00 AM, DZ-Jay said:

Yes, and also consider that the $700.00 was probably at a loss to Mattel in order to keep the FTC off their backs, since they needed it to be reasonably affordable to consumers.

Nope. The pricing had nothing to do with the FTC. Furthermore, US anti-trust law prohibits manufacturers selling goods at less than cost (predatory pricing) except in liquidation. (It's OK for RETAILERS to have loss-leaders, though.)

[+DZ-Jay]

11 minutes ago, Walter Ives said:

As is usual in animation, the audio is recorded first and the animation created to sync to the audio. The audio master was SMPTE time-coded and the person marking the transition points could manually drag the tape slowly back and forth across the read head to obtain the time code of a phoneme to the nearest field. The data tracks were positioned using the SMPTE time code. On playback the pre-recorded data track serves as a time code track for the Keyboard, with a software PLL maintaining sync across inter-record gaps, so the synchronization between the animation and the audio should be as good as the operator's diligence in recording the phoneme times. If your emulation isn't serving streamed tape data the PLL is running open loop and you should be really impressed that the APh crew ensured that it works anyway.

 

I think the thing that impresses us most -- at least myself -- is the fact that such sophisticated technology was purportedly being offered in the consumer products space.  As your comment below suggests, the typical consumer-faced personal computer included plain-old manually-operated cassette recorders low RAM, and very rudimentary capabilities -- at least in the base offerings.

 

So, for a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s (like most of us here), and not having been exposed in general to larger-scale commercial computers, some of these capabilities in a product actually accessible to the mass market approached something like magic or science fiction.

 

Knowing how it actually worked (and that it worked at all!) is even more impressive -- and the fact that it may have been boring old run-of-the-mill technology from the 1960s used in banks and commerce does not detract from that. It was quite visionary to attempt to apply this technology to the retail consumer market.

 

11 minutes ago, Walter Ives said:

The first version of Mimi's animation just had the lips moving. APh thought that was rather lifeless and so added the jaw movement. It thought the result still somewhat stilted. Then inspiration hit: by having the eyes blink occasionally they brought life to the whole face. Of course, if you can make both eyes blink you can, very occasionally, throw in a wink. Today you can stop your video and confirm what you saw, but back in 1980 users couldn't be quite sure…

 

Nope. Mattel management was fully committed to the Keyboard Component until August 1982. When the decision was made to kill it, it was executed immediately and decisively.

 

Interesting.

 

11 minutes ago, Walter Ives said:

The Keyboard Component was actually priced very competitively for the hardware it included. The unit cost a little over $500 to produce, but that was in line with its capabilities. Its $700 list price, which was far too low for what was being offered, was set before the manufacturing cost was accurately known. The public expected to pay well over $1,000 for a computer. The suggested retail price for the Atari 800, with 8k bytes of DRAM and an ordinary manually-operated cassette recorder was $999.99, and that was seen as a hobbyist's toy. https://books.google.com/books?id=4ODjVe3M21QC&pg=PA21 The Apple II Plus was selling for $1200 without any storage. The IBM PC was introduced in 1981 at $4,425 for the "standard configuration." https://books.google.com/books?id=dSMB0yE18cUC&pg=PA4 All of these sold very well despite their price.

 

It is true that Denham was aghast at the keyboard's manufacturing cost, but his comfort zone was manufacturing Barbie dolls that sold for $3.99 and he was operating more than a little bit outside of that paradigm. Spear and Wagner were floored when consumers proved willing to pay $35 for an electronic handheld football game, and again when they lined up to fork over $270 for a video game console. Management as a whole was similarly clueless when it came to the market for computers.

 

 

 

Yup. It will be out in the spring. Right after the Y2K patch.

 

Nope. The pricing had nothing to do with the FTC. Furthermore, US anti-trust law prohibits manufacturers selling goods at less than cost (predatory pricing) except in liquidation. (It's OK for RETAILERS to have loss-leaders, though.)

 

Fascinating, thank you for providing your insight.  It makes perfect sense in light of your comments above on Mattel management's lack of understanding of the personal computer market.

 

     -dZ.