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I recently received this device after buying it on impulse. I have
penchant for this type of hardware, and it looked really elaborate
to play around with.
The Videonics PowerScript 4000S is a professional or semi-personal
broadcast character generator/titler. In other words, it's a standa
that generates text and some graphics for display on TV. I believe
made in 1997, and it saw a certain variety of uses back in its day.
As far as I can tell, it was possibly used on a home shopping chann
some point in its life. Well, at least one of these was; the operat
system and project files are stored on a card, so the device can't
by itself. I had to purchase the card separately at an outrageous p
but it was one of only two available from the same seller on eBay.
is to make the files on the card available freely on my personal we
and possibly on archive.org. The unit reads PCMCIA flash cards, and
"start card" the device originally came with was missing when I rec
it. It's just a black card, maybe 4 megabytes, with a sticker on it
indicating that it's the start card.
The unit has two PCMCIA slots, so I have a compact flash to PCMCIA
plugged into it. I used that to make a copy from within the OS and
transferred the files to my computer. I haven't uploaded them anywh
but I've been in brief contact with at least one person who would l
have them.
My guess is that these devices are somewhat rare; it's one of the l
titlers Videonics made before they were bought out by another compa
also have a Videonics video mixer and a TM-3000, which is a more po
but less professional titler that they made. The TM-3000 was used m
widely in churches, schools, and public access TV. The video mixer
used in the same settings.
I've uploaded a bunch of screencaps from the PS4000S, and I've link
them below. The UI that you can see is the entire OS. It was powere
Adobe PostScript, but I really don't know what the full implication
that is. I had a thought that maybe I can load up an old version of
scripting language somewhere and then run the files from the PS4000
it, but I'm not sure if that would actually do anything.
As far as the UX for this thing, it's not exactly great. It's reall
play around with an old piece of hardware like this, and it's certa
usable for its time. However, it has to constantly redraw everythin
screen, even if you just move a window or click on something. If th
lot going on in the scene, this can make every action take several
which is really frustrating. That being said, it's still fun to imi
commercials and TV graphics with it. Someone I know commented that
completely real. I told him that it looks real because it it is. Th
probably used to make commercials, infomercials, rolling credits, w
you can think of in the '90s. It certainly wasn't the only piece of
hardware available, but it was probably out there somewhere, even i
not very popular.
In addition, you could think of it as being a kind of standalone Po
machine. I found some files on the start card with a bunch of slide
introducing people and topics for company meetings. There wasn't mu
to find, however. It was just a couple of screens for a shopping ch
as previously mentioned, and these company slides.
I did stream my first time navigating the UI and making some screen
twitch.tv doesn't keep streams for very long. I might redo the vide
put it on YouTube just for history's sake. I really don't think any
should be selling the start cards if it's just a bunch of files rea
startup. You should be able to just download the files, drop them o
properly formatted compact flash card, and put it in a PCMCIA conve
let the PS4000 boot off of that.
Anyway, enjoy the screenshots. Send me a message if you wanna know
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