Released in 1991, the Commodore CDTV, although not badged as an Amiga, is more or less an Amiga 500 with CD-ROM drive included.
System Overview
The CDTV is housed in a ‘separates’ Hi-Fi styled casing, which intended to be part of your home entertainment set up.
Considered a trailblazer now, the CDTV was way ahead of its time. Marketing the CDTV at the time was a challenge, as multimedia home computing was very much in its infancy. Unfortunately, technology and the market were not at the point where this kind of product was to prove popular. Retailers struggled to sell the product, with many being instructed to market the product as home entertainment, rather than computing.
Technically too, the specification in terms of chipset, RAM, and processor configuration is the same as the Amiga 500. The Motorola 68000 is present as well as 1mb of RAM as standard.
Adding peripherals to the CDTV meant it can be used essentially as an Amiga 500. Joysticks, mouse, keyboard and disk drives can all be added easily.
CDTV is another example of potential from Commodore, muddled with a poor reading of the marketplace. Ultimately, it was another failed system.
WHERE TO BUY THE Commodore CDTV
A lifelong avid gamer and computing enthusiast, Matt has decades of Retro Gaming experience. Now over 40 years old, Matt now even considers himself retro, but fortunately, nobody has developed a Matt emulator (not yet at least!).