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| Joystick adapters |
Several add on where made to improve the ergonomic of the disc controller,
the most discussed hardware part of the Intellivision, that divide player between detractors and supporters.
You could find in the shops several solution from simple stick to glue to the disc, to complete
alternative joysticks to be connected to the controller port. |
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| PlayCable cable TV adapter |
The Playcable was distributed in selected areas of US from 1981 to 1983.
This module, launch with the complete name of PlayCable: The All Game Channel, permitted to download Mattel games from cable TV.
Il Cable TV Adapter was at that time, a very interesting technical solution for TV operators to distribute contents to their customers.
The project was made by the PlayCable Company, a joint venture of Mattel and General Instruments.
The design of PlayCable is based on the original look of the Intellivision console. It inserts into the cartridge slot, just like the Intellivoice.
When you turn on the Master Component, a menu appears on the monitor: this menu is made of several pages describing a total of 20 available games.
A selection of 10 games is presented each month, and all the games would rotate several times.
The PlayCable is not able to storage the software, instead it sintonize on the channel transmitting the selected game, to donwload data at the moment, whit a latency of ten seconds. This was an obious solution to avoid piracy, even if some hack of the system had been documented.
When downloaded the game, the console just read the memory of the PlayCable like a traditional cart.
Despite an initial succes and the growing demand, the project was dismissed when next generation games start using more than 8K of data: this was the maximum allowed in the Playcable unit!
All the modules, that had been rented by the TV companies, were simply sent back by customers. |
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