Nuon

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For the Dutch company for supply of gas, water and electricity see Nuon (company)

Nuon was a technology that adds additional features to a DVD player. In addition to viewing DVDs, one can play 3D video games and use enhanced DVD navigational tools such as zoom and smooth scanning of DVD video. One could also play CDs while the Nuon graphics processor generates synchronized graphics on the screen. There were plans to provide Internet access capability in the next generation of Nuon-equipped DVD players.

Contents

[edit] Nuon as DVD Format

The Nuon platform was primarily marketed as a new DVD format. A large majority of Nuon players that were sold in fact resembled typical consumer DVD players with the only noticeable difference being a Nuon logo. Nuon players offered a number of features that were not available on other DVD players when playing standard DVD-formatted titles. These included very smooth forward and reverse functionality and the ability to smoothly zoom in and out of sections of the video image. In addition, Nuon provided a software platform to DVD authors to provide interactive software like features to their titles.

[edit] Nuon as Gaming Platform

Nuon originally started off as "Project X," and was featured in EGM's 1999 Video Game Buyer's Guide. One of the Nuon's main software developers was Jeff Minter, who created a version of Tempest (entitled Tempest 3000) for the system, and the built-in VLM-2 audio visualizer.

The games offered were simplistic and few. The graphics technology placed Nuon games somewhere between the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. The graphics capabilities were sadly outdated when the first Nuon players were released. The Dreamcast had been released several months earlier and gamers were already looking forward to the PlayStation 2 to be released the next year.

[edit] Models

In North America, Nuon was used in the Samsung DVD-N501 & DVD-N2000 models, they also released several models in other parts of the world which are DVD-N504 (Europe), DVD N505 (Europe) & DVD-N591 (Korea) and a Toshiba DVD player & 2 RCA which are the DRC300N & DRC480N. The Nuon was also used in Motorola's Streamaster 5000 "Digital DNA" set-top box. However the format has appeared to have died off. As of November 2004, there are no Nuon enabled DVD players shipping and no new Nuon software titles.

[edit] Peripherals and Accessories

Peripherals for Nuon-enhanced DVD players included the following:

  • Logitech Gamepad
  • Pro-elite controller
  • Stealth controller
  • Warrior Digital-D pad
  • controller extension cable
  • port replicator to move the Nuon ports to anywhere desired

[edit] Bankruptcy of VM Labs

NUON was created by VM Labs who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001. The rights to the NUON technology was purchased in 2002 by Genesis Microchip.

[edit] Released Movies

Only four DVD releases utilized NUON technology:

  1. Planet of the Apes
  2. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
  3. Bedazzled
  4. Dr. Dolittle 2

[edit] Unreleased Movies

  1. Galaxy Quest
  2. Stigmata
  3. Toxic Avenger

[edit] Released Games

Eight games were released for the NUON:

  1. Tempest 3000
  2. Freefall 3050 A.D.
  3. Merlin Racing
  4. Space Invaders X.L.
  5. Iron Soldier 3 (later recalled due to incompatibility with some players)
  6. Ballistic (only available with Samsung players)
  7. The Next Tetris (only available with Toshiba players)
  8. Crayon Shin Chan 3 (Korean-only release)

[edit] Unreleased games

  1. aMaze
  2. Atari's Greatest Hits
  3. Battleship: Surface Thunder
  4. Boggle
  5. Breakout
  6. Bugdom
  7. Bust-A-Move 4
  8. Dragon's Lair
  9. Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp
  10. The Game of Life
  11. Hoyle Card Games
  12. Jeopardy
  13. Knockout Kings
  14. Madden NFL Football
  15. Monopoly
  16. Myst
  17. Native II
  18. Need For Speed II
  19. New Scrabble
  20. Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure
  21. Pong
  22. RC de Go!
  23. Risk 2
  24. Riven
  25. Shanghai: Mahjongg Essentials
  26. Sorry!
  27. Space Ace
  28. Speedball 2100
  29. Spider-Man
  30. Star Trek: Invasion
  31. Tiger Woods PGA Golf
  32. Wheel of Fortune
  33. Yahtzee
  34. zCards

[edit] Collections and Samplers

  1. Interactive Sampler (three different versions)
  2. NUON Games + Demos (collection from NUON-Dome)
  3. NUON-Dome PhillyClassic 5 Demo Disc (giveaway collection)

[edit] Homebrew Development

During late 2001, VM Labs released a homebrew SDK which allowed people to be able to program apps/games for their NUON system. Unfortunately, only the Samsung DVD-N501/DVDN504/DVDN505 and RCA DRC300N/DRC480N can load homebrew games. The Samsung DVDN-2000 and the Toshiba cannot. Curiously, the RCA DRC300N and RCA DRC480N cannot play commercial NUON games.

[edit] Homebrew Releases

Several homebrew titles have been created for or ported to NUON. They are not commercially available and require the user to burn the material to a NUON-compatible CD-R.

  1. Ambient Monsters
  2. Atari / C64 Video Game Music Player
  3. Atari 800 Emulator
  4. Atari 2600 PacMan (hacked version of VLM's Chomp)
  5. BOMB
  6. Breakout
  7. Chomp (sample game included with the second NUON SDK)
  8. Decaying Orbit (port of the Yaroze game)
  9. Doom (port of the shareware edition)
  10. PacMan - Tournament Edition (hacked version of VLM's Chomp)
  11. SameGame - Colors
  12. SameGame - Shapes
  13. Sheshell's Sea Adventure
  14. Snake
  15. Synth Demo
  16. Yaroze Classics (features Katapila, Invs & BreakDown)


[edit] External links

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