CDTV, CDi when the living room multimedia player was the future

At the beginning of the 90's both Philips and Commodore has a vision of an new class of home entertainment system, that would sit under the Big TV in the living room next the to VHS recorder, that would educate and entertain the masses. It wold not be a hoe computer or a games console but its own thing.
I would like to thank a few people who help with this months video.
Jonny Blanchard ReEnthused ( / @reenthused ) who helped me out, by kindly letting me use some of his games footage when my composite to hdmi box died. His channel covers loads of wonderful old systems, including a whole bunch of ones you may never have seen.
Zombieworkshop again for his artwork (www.zombiworkshop.com/) it is really worth checking out his artwork, and if you need some doing he's always open to doing commissions.
Also if you're into light gun games the channel I mentioned that was worth checking out is GouldFish On Games ( / @gouldfishongames )

[@hedgehog3180]

This is literally the first time I have ever clicked on an ad so I hope it's good. It's definitely the only time I've gotten an ad that I was actually genuinely interested in and happy to get.

[@tylerljohnson]

I worked as an engineer developing tools used to build CDi titles back in the mid 90s, most tools we built were for corporate or education, mpeg tools as well. Lots of kiosks used in stores and conferences were powered by cdi titles under the covers. Ah the good ol days

[@RetroBytesUK]

Out of interest what platform did you use for developing CDi titles, for the CTDV they used regular Amigas, but I've never seen a CDi dev kit. I assumed PC was probably the dev platform of choice, but I did wonder if it might be one the the big Unix platforms of the time (just because of the need to deal with video).

[@tylerljohnson]

@@RetroBytesUK If i recall most of us had philips cdi 650s, some had earlier models. All coding was done in C on a Sun workstation (IPC, SLC, IPX), and cross-compiled to an OS-9 binary using gcc. The cdi device had developer emulation hardware in it. We never used pc's as the development tools didn't exist on them at the time. Plus networking and general software development tools on the sun boxes was so, so much better. Like I said, we build tools for other developers, so I can't speak to how they build their titles, but our customers rarely built games, as games were all custom, bespoke code. Our customers build their titles in a philips/microware application called MediaMogul.

[@tylerljohnson]

a bit of trivia - we delivered our custom titles on CDRs (since our volumes were so low, and timelines where so short there wasn't time to get titles pressed). In those days a cd burner was $1k and each blank disk was $10 (thats like $20 in todays dollars). Crazy times for sure

[@680x0]

@@tylerljohnson I worked for Capitol Multimedia (originally CapDisc) from 1992 to 1995. Yes, we used Sun Sparcstation 1's running SunOS 4 for cross-compiling. And for testing, we used model 180(?), the multi-chassis unit, which could access some kind of shared filesystem with the Sun (been so long I forget the details). My co-worker Jeff did the port of "Mad Dog McCree" (shown in the video) from the original Laser Disc implementation. I took his engine code and used it to port "Who Shot Johnny Rock".

[@tylerljohnson]

@@680x0 welcome to cdi-devcon 2022, glad to have you aboard! Yeah it's fuzzy to me how the sun-to-cdi player connection worked, not sure if it was serial or something else... I so wish I woulda kept a copy of a cvs repo or something from those days...

[@larsjj2794]

I've drooled over the CDi when it came out. I was about 12 and it blew my little mind away. Finally got one about 10 years ago, used it once XD

[@RetroBytesUK]

I must admit when I saw my first FMV games on it I was blown away with how it looked. That awe was relatively short lived due to the game play of most of them saddly.

[@user-eu9qn6bj6g]

Me too, I wanted one but alas I was still with a spectrum and my parents wouldn’t buy me 1.

[@clementpoon120]

finally an ad that I actually liked.

[@smo-king6504]

Same

[@viovannidrapite571]

Wala pa hello nandiyan na yung ano mamaya pa lang pababa bibili ako ng gulay na sitaw heroes adobo ko tsaka yung talbos ng kamote ang mahal ang hula

[@viovannidrapite571]

@@smo-king6504 2

[@mm7wabanamateurradiowomble30]

Loved the CDTV when it came out. and spent several years buying them up from anyone willing to sell them, including one massive order when commodore had a clearout, cant remember exactly how many we got but they arrived on two large pallets! most of them were converted into POS display unts and Caraoke machines in 'custom cabinets' built with steel frames with plywood bolted to them. Ahhh happy times! :-)

[@fernandoorozco3751]

That little tidbit of information aimed at the fans of retro light gun games was really sweet. I'm sure both of them really appreciate it

[@680x0]

I worked for a few years developing CD-i titles at a company called Capitol Multimedia (aka "CapDisc"). We did the Mad Dog McCree game you showed clips from (Jeff, down the hall worked on it), and I did a similar game called "Who Shot Johnny Rock" (borrowing some of Jeff's code). Before that, I worked on a CD-i educational title (a biography of Winston Churchill), that I'm not sure if it ever got released.

[@basurerodej8501]

Holy crap an actual good Ad Saludos desde México

[@dr_jaymz]

Our school had one, when it came we were excited and stayed in at lunchtime to play with it. I remember that much, a game where you walked around and thats about it. Later I was trying to play mpeg1 discs and I actually had a fish called wanda and may still have it. I also had Titanic all 3 discs! We coukd play these on windows after it had crashed about 9 times first eventually it would read and play the first 40 mins before you needed the next disc. Happy days.

[@ChiroMclean]

Yeah, ad system works. ¡Brilliant video dude!

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Thanks for the shout out mate! Great video, both are interesting machines in their own right that don't get talked about in good terms. I have to say I love the look of my CDTV even if I don't game on it that much (to the extent my first gen remote needed to have its cap replaced). But its so Commodore its silly! I really want to get my hands on a CDi at some point and those lightguns!

[@RetroBytesUK]

It's nice to be able to point people in the direction of relevant content, and I've been enjoying the light gun stuff so figured others would too. The thing I love about that remote, is despite the fact its aimed a being a consumer device for the living room, there is a switch on it for mouse/joy. So you choose which one it emulates, get it wrong and it does not work. So the consumer has to some how just know if its mouse or joystick emulation with software needs, or just try both settings.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

@@RetroBytesUK That switch was a massive step up from the Gen1 controller that just had a button that toggled it between the two. no lights or any indication of what mode its in. just keep pressing it then a button till it seems to work!

[@fakeshemp9599]

I like your videos! Subscribed! 👍

[@kennethjanczak4900]

Thanks for taking the time to make the video and share it i had one of the infamos comodore cdtv... it was the worst piece of crap ever... u could not play a lot of the games from the old a500 because of memory problems..... it was absolutly a dissaster...

[@SociatalEffecta]

Jolly good video old boy

[@inspiredtiny]

Great videos Sir!

[@RetroBytesUK]

Nice of you to say

[@10p6]

Nice. I had a CDI and Mad Dog McCree was awesome, and movie watching was not to bad. I wanted a CDTV but it was so expensive. In hindsight, I think the CD32 should have been in the design of the CDTV, with a slot for a plug in Floppy Drive, MPEG decoder, 2.5" IDE HDD, and option for Keyboard and mouse. If they then put the CPU on a Card to make that be upgradable too, that would have been a best seller as a basic living room multimedia computer, or if specked out as high end computer that a nice 17 inch monitor would have sat on.

[@federicocatelli8785]

Commodore went belly up 6 months after CD32 release. Out of the box it was a subpar (very few games were worthy upgrades from those on floppies) gaming system

[@leeselectronicwidgets]

I hadn’t realised that the vertical expression CD was enhanced for CDTV! :-)

[@RetroBytesUK]

I like to sneak the odd folky thing in, although if Ian had I would not die of shock. Clearly the krapwork CD needs to be.

[@dmacpher]

Amazing. Really enjoy your narration style. Hello from Canada!

[@RetroBytesUK]

Thanks good of you to say.

[@ditroia2777]

I have an old amiga format magazine and I think some CDTVs got a second life in some European airports driving information screens.

[@RetroBytesUK]

That's a rather interesting second use for them.

[@LWolf12]

I remember playing Mad Dog McCree in an arcade when I was younger. That was pretty fun, not sure I'd want to play it at home though.

[@fattomandeibu]

Never seen a CD-i, but played Lemmings on a CDTV in Comet(we used to stop in for 5 mins and play the demo kiosks on the way home, the staff didn't actually mind as we typically brought out mums and dads to buy said games on birthdays and Christmas, they sometimes even asked if we wanted to change game) and was quite impressed(keep in mind, I was 10 or 11) but never got one due to cost. Got a PCIMIA to external SCSI adapter(about 5 of them, actually, they really liked breaking) called a Squirrel for my A1200 later on, so in the end I got something better. It, along with Amiga Format cover CDs filled with shareware and PD off the internet, probably added an extra 5 years of usage onto my old 1200.

[@RetroBytesUK]

I've got a Squirrel adaptor (or 2), you're right about how much they like to break.

[@SnabbKassa]

Commodore marketing employee fired for revealing existence of product after 10 pints

[@Naaght]

Great ad :D

[@danielson9579]

I wonder if you could put a Vampire in a CDTV 🤔

[@RetroBytesUK]

You can but I think there are issues around the kickstart rom. The one flashed onto the vampire replaces the onboard rom, so you would be missing all the CDTV features, possibly including access to the cdrom drive.

[@PondersRetroGoodness]

Early entries into the CD-ROM scene before anyone really knew the strengths of the platform but using a format (fake VCR) that has a rather sad history so were probably doomed to failure from the start. Kudos for their efforts though, and nice video with shoutouts to some great small channels :)

[@RetroBytesUK]

In hind sight your right it was probably doomed from the outset. I can get why Philips thought it would all work, as essentially they thought domesday did not work commercially because of the cost of the system. Moving from laserdisc and mixed digital and analogue to cd and pure digital let them vastly reduce the cost. It's just that content the educational market wants did not equal content the home market would pay for. It's always nice to be able to promote channels I enjoy watching, even if some are way bigger than mine. Because some of this channels viewers may not have seen them yet.

[@cocusar]

What does the vfd of the cdtv displays when running amiga software? can you make it boot into workbench?

[@RetroBytesUK]

You can indeed boot into workbench, its based on the kickstart 1.3 rom. Mostly the vfd shows the time which is not particularly exciting, if you put in an audio cd it ahows the track being played.

[@judewestburner]

A friend of mine had one with a Public Domain CDROM which booted into workbench. Blew my mind to have thousands of programs available so simply.

[@jamespriest7328]

7th guest.

[@Autotrope]

Audio CD does have error correction, cd-rom just adds another level - a third level I believe on top of audio CD's two levels. It reduces the usable data size by a bit over 10% due to the added error correction data. Takes it from unrecoverable errors predicted to happen at random every once in a while to basically never, at least without more extensive disc damage than predicted.

[@bazza5699]

great video. but boy does that background music really grate after like 30 seconds..

[@robtanian865]

Is it bad i recognised 2:32 as chester? I mean before the pullout

[@judewestburner]

You mention 160mb of storage for CD's. Was that a format limit on the CDi?

[@User0000000000000004]

Nope. The only reason I can think of why he said 160MB would be if maybe if he's talking about those tiny CDs. Standard CD was 650MB, cdi was 744MB.

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Awwww, you could have mentioned two games that pushed the CD-i Voyeur and Burn:Cycle - I rather enjoyed them along with the golf game

[@LevelUp_ErikJ]

Yeah, the Sony Handheld CD-i sold so well, it never got a digital video add-on board.

[@RetroBytesUK]

Guess even sony has heard the phrase throwning good money after bad.

[@tiberiusbrain]

My dad got this cdi thing back in the day, yet he scuffed at my playstation a bit later. The playstation was better at playing cds tho, better DAC. Also you forget to mention the link between the lightgun and the wii, philips is mentioned in the wii patents But the truth is, i had fun with the cdi. I had never played defender of the crown before and it was great. Thinking about it while watching your video. Lets say internet had a bit broader of a band, because the cdi did have "the Net" (some sort of dutch national internet). I could have seen success if there was more band for the internet. Mpeg video encoding was already a thing, so maybe we could have had videophone with it. Or, since im watching a video, lets say it was possible to share a video through it. It just came too early.

[@RetroBytesUK]

I dont think the network services for CDi ever made it outside of the Netherlands which unsurprisingly was its most successful market. You're right I did not mention the link between the wii and the light gun, I did not really cover the relationship between Nintendo and the CDi which could probably have a video all of its own. Infact several channels have probably covered that I would be suprised if Slopes Gamesroom had not covered that side of things in a complete history of video.

[@tiberiusbrain]

@@RetroBytesUK my mom should still have that old cdi somewhere. Rotting capacitors and all. I think i still have the Net demodisc.

[@RetroBytesUK]

@@tiberiusbrain is it the big VCR style on your mum has, or the later games console style one ? Recapping it should not be too hard if you want to get it running smoothly, the cd tray mechanismis on the VCR style ones tend to fail and need fixing but it's not a big job.

[@tiberiusbrain]

@@RetroBytesUK ok yeah its the big vcr model with the controller ports on the back. Thanks for the info really, might be fun to do during this second wave in the pandemic

[@RetroBytesUK]

@@tiberiusbrain I would be lying if I said I had not stocked up on parts todo repairs during lockdown 2.

[@kevinbarry71]

Absolutely with you with regard to CD caddies. One of the all-time dumbest ideas. They didn't make any sense then; and I don't remember anybody ever explaining why they existed

[@RetroBytesUK]

Apparently it was to protect the CD, the idea being that we would buy one per CD and that is what we would store them in, rather than the jewel case the CD came in. Why any one through that is what we would do, god only knows.

[@kevinbarry71]

RetroBytes yes, I do remember hearing that. Magazine reviewer said that with a straight face. Those stupid things cost about $15 each back then. So I did what most people did, just use one and switched it a lot. But of course they were quite fragile. Whole thing is just insane

[@awesomeferret]

It's impossible to argue that it's "one of the all time dumbest ideas", I'm sure you'll agree after some more thought. It a good idea with a lot of sound logic that didn't transfer well to the real world. Humans are lazy, not smart. Caddies are really smart if you think about what they are atd what they do, but they are also pointless to most people since it's worth the effort and risk to save yourself from buying an overpriced caddy.

[@another3997]

Just checking... but you did say "Google's RANKING algorithms" didn't you? I know some people view Google as a bunch of, ahem, rankers, but having algorithms for it seems a bit OTT. 😁 My hearing isn't what it used to be. 😉

[@jandoor2068]

"A CD with it's hundred and sixty meg of storage..." Did I hear that correctly? Even the very first iteration of CDROM's held SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY meg, not one hundred and sixty.... Later CD authoring could manage up to 800MB on a CD. Where the hell did you get 160MB?

[@RetroBytesUK]

160Mb is the AVI laser disk system used by domesday, that pioneered the encoding technique used laster for Cd-rom. The system was also made available for the MAC, but I think the only titile released for it was the Volcanos disc. There was also a PC verison for the RM Nimbus. Dont know how compatible was with other none RM pcs.

[@carlwells9504]

Too bad these CD consoles didint have digital audio out (for external DAC) - would use one as main CD Player just for the cool factor

[@xxnoxx-xp5bl]

Given that the Atari Jaguar sold 250,000 units and the CDTV didn't break 100,000, I wouldn't call the Jaguar the bigger failure.

[@RetroBytesUK]

It was more of a joke than anything else, but I was intending the comparison to CDi, commodore halted making the CDTV after a short period as sales where not going well (time period for time period CDTV probably out sold the jaguar hard to tell as commodore sales figures vary widely due to a bit of internal fraud around sale or return) Atari had to keep going they bet the whole farm on Jaguar and it killed them in the end. That's probably the biggest failure about the Jaguar it killed Atari, Philips Commodore both survived CDi and CDTV, Commodore later died due to top level managerial incompetence (although the rise and rise of the PC would probably have killed it anyway or changed it beyond recognition).

[@judewestburner]

I feel sorry for Atari with the Jaguar. It just got to the point they could make a decent go of it anywhere, but then they had a boss who didn't believe in advertising or supporting the Devs, so I guess it was inevitable

[@RetroBytesUK]

​@@judewestburner I think the not supporting devs is what really did for the jag in the end, it meant they did just not have the games they needed to sell the system in volume. Mind you Atari was so short of money by this point I guess even if they had prioritised it they probably did not have the money for it.

[@badasahog]

Nintendo fans know the Zelda games collectively as the unholy triforce

[@MaxQ10001]

It was even better, the CD was ~700MB, not 160 😉

[@herrabanani]

I saw this video in an add and the subject seemed intresting but I just wanted to say that I don't really like the thumbnail design personally

[@wimwiddershins]

Narrative by Sir Digby Chicken Caesar?

[@User0000000000000004]

160MB on CD? You mean 650MB.

[@jandoor2068]

Yeah, I was wondering if I heard that correctly. Who the hell could be so tech ignorant as to think the CD only held 160MB?

[@federicocatelli8785]

80 mm CD (mini CD)exist...think they can hold around 180 mb

[@user-eu9qn6bj6g]

I like CD caddies, they’re full on retro. Though I agree they were Terrible but I still like them anyway because of that. I have both a scsi apple caddy CD-rom drive and a draw CD-rom drive and I always use the caddy one :) sweet

[@RetroBytesUK]

There is somthing very nostalgic about using them.

[@user-eu9qn6bj6g]

@@RetroBytesUK it is a faff for sure. But then I like record players and recording on cassette and setting the levels and all that. Even though I also use Spotify. There’s just something satisfying when you have to get engaged like you did with old media/tech. I have a few old Macintosh’s from the 80s/90/ all networked but I still use the Zip drives 99% (3 of them) to transfer software lol i prefer the process, noise and nostalgia but then I’m odd :) how many machines do you have? Great channel by the way. Binge Watched them all

[@Foebane72]

Commodore had piss-poor marketing of the Amiga in the 1980s and 1990s - they had the world's first true multimedia home computer, and they didn't know what to sell it as! I'm disappointed that Commodore went bust when they should've flourished, but I'm not honestly surprised, with the likes of Mehdi Ali ruling the C= roost near its collapse.

[@zupergodo1]

O pobre Tandy/Memorex VIS nadie la recuerda

[@puddleglum3306]

3DO was a lot more successful than CDI or CDTV to be fair.

[@federicocatelli8785]

Not hard to believe. Can you name 5 really good games for CDI or CDTV?

[@mark12358]

3:25 No, you didn't exaggerate too much :)

[@dariofercho]

Cool video but the background music it's too loud and it sucks...video 10/10 music 3/10

[@anonUK]

The background music would be fine... for a documentary about Hollerith's punched card machines or the development of IBM in the 20s.