I bought one of the first Video Toasters and then Video Flyers to roll off the line about ten years ago, hoping to output animation at "broadcast quality" as they touted, only to find that the compression caused large flat areas of solid color to become degraded and loaded with artifacts. Also, no high quality outputs...just composite (VHS quality), no y/c (SVHS) or component (beta SP...true broadcast). In short, my $12,000 system sat and collected a lot of dust...I'm about ready to shove it out the window. I'm wondering if anyone here has been using desktop video systems in the under-$5,000 range (like Pinnacel 2000) that can truly output animation at a level of quality that could conceivably be submitted to a cable network like the Cartoon Network or shown at a film festival on digital video projector...actual BROADCAST quality, if output to DV or beta sp? Your experiences very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Well, me thinks my shyteola system (amd 380, 128 ram, 16meg voodoo) should be able to output at broadcast quality... I can output to DV with a firewire card, and so long as I use little or no compression, it should be fine for television viewing, even at quality higher than NTSC. Still, something that would be shown at a film festival would be best off outputted to 35mm wouldnt it? Im speaking out of my ass, so ignore me. ry