MJPEG video compression featured in the announced specification,[3]: 168 but this was omitted from the delivered product.[4]
: 169 A handful of engineering prototypes for the MJPEG daughterboard exist.
A stripped down Mach kernel was used as the operating system for the card. Due to the supporting processor, 32-bit color on the NeXTdimension was faster than 2-bit greyscale Display PostScript on the NeXTcube. Display PostScript never actually ran on the board so the Intel i860 never did much more than move blocks of color data around. The Motorola 68040 did the crunching and the board, while fast for its time, never lived up to the hype. Since the main board always included the greyscale video logic, each NeXTdimension allowed the simultaneous use of an additional monitor. List price for a NeXTdimension sold as an add-on to the NeXTcube was US$3,995 (equivalent to $8,940 in 2023), and US$2,995 (equivalent to $6,700 in 2023) for the MegaPixel Color Display.[5]
^Scott, Greg (12 November 1990). "New Machines from NeXT". U-M Computing News. Vol. 5, no. 19. p. 9. Retrieved 24 March 2024. The NeXTdimension board provides 32-bit color, and includes an Intel i860 graphics accelerator chip. A custom chip from C-Cube Microsystems supports real-time image compression and decompression.
^Baran, Nick; Linderholm, Owen (November 1990). "Fast New Systems from NeXT". Byte. pp. 165–168. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
^Kim, Yongmin (December 1991). "Chips Deliver Multimedia". Byte. pp. 163–164, 166, 169, 171, 173. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
