Philips CD-i, The multimedia future that never was.

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[@JacGoudsmit]

I worked on CD-i productions at Codim between 1994 and 1995. Codim (for some time known as SPC/Codim) was a small but important producer of CD-i titles, many under the Philips name. You probably wouldn't have heard about anything I wrote; I mostly worked on educational titles. But if you look at the small print of many Philips CD-i titles, you'll probably see the Codim name. CD-i started out as a good idea but had one major flaw: All CD-i discs had to be playable on all CD-i players. Not only did this mean that European (PAL) discs had to be playable in the USA (NTSC) but it also meant that there would never be an upgraded version of CD-i with more memory, a faster CD drive, a hard disk or a network interface (though some of those were available on the professional players). After all, why would anyone invest in a fast CD drive, more memory etc. if all discs would play in the basic system with a 1x speed drive. And why would anyone write a game that could play better in a CD-i player with more features if it was mandatory that it should also play in players that wouldn't have those features. My favorite CD-i application was: Background music. Philips had a department back then called Background Music Services (BMS). They were a competitor of Muzak (guess who won and competed the other away). Once a month, they would send a box of DAT tapes to Codim, which we recorded to the hard disk of a computer with a special Sony DSP sound card that cost thousands of dollars but could encode audio to ADPCM format in real-time. The computer had a program (programmed in MS-DOS by my predecessor) that would split the two channels (each channel had one track of music) and multiplexed the ADPCM audio into a real-time mode-2 form 2 file. The file would be part of a disc image, as well as another file with text info (such as song titles). The result was something that could be played with a CD-i player or with a special BGM player (google for the Philips BMS 3000). It could fit 4 to 8 hours of music if I recall correctly. The process of converting one pair of two DAT tapes into one disc image that would go to the factory in Germany, would take a day, and there were usually 10 disc images to be made each month. I wanted to make my own BGM CD but never got around to it. Now the only information about the format that's available on the Internet seems to come from... me. Anyway, I have good memories of working for Codim. It was a great team and we had a lot of fun together. I left because I was getting tired of doing the same thing over and over all the time. One more thing: Please stop twisting CD's inside jewel cases: if there's a bit of dirt between the case and the CD, it will make a nice perfectly round scratch that will make it unplayable.

[@jelle_smid]

Held! In andere tijden had ik je hand geschud! Mijn CD-i heeft een belangrijke plek in mijn hobby-kamer!

[@JacGoudsmit]

@@jelle_smid Als je ooit een Vapro (Vakopleiding Procestechniek) CD-i in handen krijgt, dan heb ik die waarschijnlijk gemaakt.

[@adrianzanoli]

Great story, I'm making a homebrew FMW game for the CD-i, the base model, with only 1 MB of RAM looks like the major problem to me, the extended case with additional 1.5 MB from the DVC help a lot, but most of the early games and softwares had to fit in the 1MB ram. Looks like make sounds effect and music work at the same time isn't easy at all.

[@JacGoudsmit]

@Lassi Kinnunen Maybe I should have said: the main major TECHNICAL flaw :-) I lived in the home town of Philips but I don't know anyone who owned a CD-i. I never owned one myself either. Everyone I knew already had a PC or some other computer like an Amiga. And they were just way more useful. VideoCDs took off about as much as Laser Discs, which is about as much as a lead balloon. Who wants to buy a movie that doesn't even fit on a single disc? Yes it was digital so it was robust, but the quality wasn't any better than VHS and everyone already had a VHS. VCD was a solution without a problem.

[@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire]

I almost like the CD-i, it just had way too many issues to be actually, well, good. My only hunt now is to try and find a development kit for the system, so I could try to make some homebrew on it without trying to reverse engineer a console I don't physically own.

[@professorpenne9962]

I remember dad renting the CD-I and 3DO (yes renting game consoles used to be a thing) and they both were way more impressive then the genesis and snes, then he rented a playstation. you dont have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was the new appliance in our living room a week later.

[@RetroDawn]

I always have liked the 3DO more than the PS, myself. I realize that's an unpopular position. I have never owned a PS, nor wanted to, since they came out in the US.

[@jamesw3546]

@@RetroDawn 🤯

[@IAmAnEvilTaco]

Renting game consoles is still a thing. I rented one from Aaron’s.

[@marioalexanderski9598]

We used to rent IBM PC and compatibles and VIC-20 before that.

[@disco7379]

Renting electronics used to be big in the UK, my parents rented a TV at one point.

[@jonasgrill1155]

"Here's the problem! Too many toasters! You know what they say? All toasters toast toast!"

[@n64team30]

Yeah!

[@coolguy02536]

DEAR PESKY PLUMBERS

[@TheWASHINGMACHINEBOY]

​@@coolguy02536 the koopalings and i have taken over the mushroom kingdom

[@cwballard1751]

The princess is now a permanent guest at one of my seven Koopa hotels.

[@TheWASHINGMACHINEBOY]

@@cwballard1751 i dare you to find her if you can

[@anactualmotherbear]

The first summer job I had as a teenager was at Burger King, and they used CD-i for their training videos. There's hundreds of undocumented discs out there for businesses.

[@flashrocket9158]

I bet they got lotsa Spaghetti!

[@GiordanDiodato]

that's interesting. Then again it started as a "multimedia console" (almost a decade before the PS2, btw) so that makes sense.

[@Tornado1994]

Me too! What year was this? For me, this was in 1999.

[@anactualmotherbear]

@@Tornado1994 Great to hear someone else remembers this. Considering you kinda had to be a HUGE NERD to even realize it was a CD-i system... For me, I believe it was 1998, but also again in 1999.

[@scoutdy6547]

"Sears, which doesn't sell electronics anymore" They ain't selling much of anything anymore Dave lol.

[@Shamino0]

They were acquired by K-Mart. Both brands still exist, but there aren't many retail stores left. Which makes me sad - they were the best for consumer appliances.

[@INeedAttentionEXE]

@@Shamino0 Our K-mart smelt like sewer and didn't have anything in stock. Got replaced by Target and Ross very very recently.

[@RetroMMA]

@@INeedAttentionEXE So, a different scent of sewer..?

[@BBC600]

Sears Canada is 100% defunct....

[@INeedAttentionEXE]

​@@RetroMMA I get the joke, haha, they did however fix the sewer leak.

[@icrafterchips]

At least we got those spicy Hotel Mario memes

[@startedtech]

And Zelda!

[@squirrelguy2195]

Nice of the 8-Bit Guy to upload a video, eh Luigi?

[@poble]

MAH BOI

[@k2yp705]

true tho

[@aegonthedragon7303]

I bet they got lots of spaghetti!

[@Reegangdialectonfortnite]

Me : Sees the CD-I. My Brain : Lamp Oil, Rope, Bombs? It's yours my friend as long you have enough rupees.

[@il-dottore]

Sorry Link, I can't give credit. Come back when you're a little, *MMMMMMMMMM* _Richer!_

[@cst1229]

Nice of the princess to invite us over for a picnic, gay Luigi?

[@nathangitz2674]

This is illegal, you know.

[@penatio]

I just wonder what Ganon's up to!

[@pettttson]

Gee, it sure is boring 'round here

[@RubenvanKuik]

The irony of watching this on a Philips 31.5" 4K monitor.

[@thecdgmuseum9287]

Thanks for the shout out. I just uploaded them all, and removed the audio from the ones that got take down notices. Surprisingly many of them are allowed. I have a fairly complete collection of the Warner Era CD+G titles, notably missing Phoebe Snow - Something Real, so always looking out for the CD+G version of that which is apparently pretty rare! Thanks again!

[@The8BitGuy]

No problem. I'm surprised you saw this video!

[@thecdgmuseum9287]

@@The8BitGuy Got a flurry of new followers and someone mentioned seeing it on 8 bit guy. So a quick google, and....

[@BayEmirkiYT]

@@thecdgmuseum9287 I'm waiting for completing to your replying

[@WrestlingWithGaming]

Thanks again for letting me be a small part of the video. I appreciate it!

[@The8BitGuy]

Thank you for being a part of it! You're parts made the video better as a whole!

[@SteveC86]

My mind was blown when my mom finally let me rent the CDI (Magnavox model) from Blockbuster. I only had it for 3 days, with one game rented, but I stayed glued to that sucker the entire weekend. Cheers!

[@jeroenboth167]

What game did you play?

[@GiordanDiodato]

despite the memes it created, the CD-i was a pretty advanced home console for its time It had 1MB of RAM at a time where most consoles barely had 128KB of RAM.

[@Dr.W.Krueger]

yes, all that memory is great to have. what is not great is the slow CPU and dinky VDP. dead on arrival.

[@GiordanDiodato]

@@Dr.W.Krueger 15.5 MHz, which was most mid-range PCs in 1991. If anything, the reason why it was DoA was because Philips never intended it to be a games console, but rather a multimedia player.

[@Dr.W.Krueger]

@@GiordanDiodato It was too slow. Period. Just look at the applications on this abomination.

[@GiordanDiodato]

@@Dr.W.Krueger pssst liking your comment doesn't make you right. also most of the applications were slow likely due to the CD format, as CD format was still pretty new when it came to video games.

[@SILS74R]

FUNFACT: The hole in the middle of the cd/cdi is the same size of the dutch(FL) coin of 10 cents .... a choice by Philips when deciding how big the hole in the middle shoud be.

[@thatguyontheright1]

What about the Laserdisc hole? Phillips made Laserdisc too.

[@williamreid6255]

And guess what led up to the CD originally being a max of 74 minutes long? Beethoven’s 9th symphony.

[@taududeblobber221]

@@williamreid6255 i think someone debunked that

[@yaralaterveer]

Nowadays even the €0,01 coin is slightly too big to git on the hole😂 (yes I just tested that)

[@JORGETECHJorge]

"Hotel Mario... The cutscenes aren't all that great". I think the cutscenes are actually the best part of the game.

[@JasontheFolf]

*I HOPE YOU MADE LOTS OF SPAGHETTI!*

[@ScottishLeaguehero764]

LUIGI LOOK!

[@adrianzanoli]

did U finished the game?

[@davidv776]

Well, in a certain way, they're oddly attractive, well, they're atrocious... But you probably enjoy to see how bad they are... I happened to me back then... Watch the intro scenes, and say, "what a pile of garbage"... However, not being able to skip them, not wanting to skip them either... Some kind of sadomasochist taste... Heh...

[@Toonrick12]

It's like a train wreck in the best way.

[@dennisstappers5920]

I remember using it in lessons at my driving school back in the 90s, it was perfect for practicing traffic situations, all with videos etc. There were a lot of e-learning and practice systems using cd-i in that time

[@Satoshi9801]

My driver's ed class used LaserDiscs...and this was in 2015.

[@someoneontheinternet3090]

I remember when I got my Sega CD I went around to all of the music stores and asked for CD+G albums and no one had any idea what I was talking about

[@davidoconnor2020]

I did exactly them same thing, never found any.

[@Cole-xq2tl]

"Lamp oil, rope, bombs. You want it, it's yours my friend, as long as you have enough rupees"

[@Cole-xq2tl]

"This peace is what all true warriors strive for."

[@poble]

"sorry link, I can't give credit. come back when you're a little, HMMMMMMM, richer."

[@RECTANGLESWITHEYES]

Ah, Morshu..

[@aquathemage1680]

"Lucky shot!"

[@Ordlnary_Gamer]

dopy

[@jaspal666]

CDi was used as a digital manual for a few US weapon systems in the 90’s. I provided 3D animation for intros for the group who put those digital manuals together.

[@jaspal666]

A portable unit with built in monitor was used I the field. It was to fulfill the requirement for paper and digital instruction.

[@adamatkinson2728]

"What were they thinking!?!?"

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

Ask Nintendo

[@newtype5005]

AVGN reference?

[@adamatkinson2728]

@@newtype5005 Finally!

[@burntyper]

@@newtype5005 no, mao tse tung's

[@user-gk4jp6lt2b]

KZbin Poop. Where there’s smoke, they pitch back.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

9:16 I remember most DVD players _not_ being capable of playing VCD's. I remember in 2002 we finally got a new Sony model to replace our horrible KLH player and it had VCD compatibility. I was in love with it because I had a lot of low quality Simpsons episodes and I would use Nero to burn them to VCD's and watch them whenever. We were 4 years away from getting a DVD burner. Nero was great because it allowed you to make your own menus for VCD's albeit they were limited, no cursor support, you could place 9 choices on a menu (VCD's could only fit so much anyways) and each was assigned a number but with clever graphic tricks you could make some really nice looking menus.

[@paulrolfe4599]

I remember using nero as well, to make Photo CD's , VCD's and burn music CD's , fantastic software

[@SoyLuciano]

Fun fact: VCDs are popular in most Asian countries (e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapora, China and the Philippines).

[@lobsterwhisperer7932]

the first dvd players in general were hit or miss in regards to reliability

[@iluvpwny7565]

one day there will be a youtube channel named "The 64-bit Guy" when everyone else using quantum computer

[@adrianzanoli]

And there will be a "Quantic bit guy" when computers will be "MEME energy powered"

[@loganiushere]

Adrian Zanoli hmm... how much power can you harvest from memes? I mean a funny meme will make you laugh, and laughing takes energy, so could you show people memes to make them laugh, then harvest the energy they spend while laughing and use that to power a computer? It’s probably the least efficent way you could ever harvest energy, but it’s possible.

[@KohuGaly]

@@adrianzanoli wait, your computer isn't powered by memes yet? Do you work in a museum or something?

[@oddthecat3561]

Or will have "The8BitGuy Daughter" doing this.

[@AnonymousGentooman]

you reminded me of that avgn scene, where he sees an elderly version of him playing bad wii games, and poking fun at the wii

[@Auxodium]

These potential copyright strikes on a channel like this is for audio and video is utterly ridiculous. I feel for you 8 bit Guy.

[@74HC138]

Especially as absolutely everything he's doing falls squarely under Fair Use.

[@metaleggman18]

I mean any video can be copyright striked, but I think he *meant* he would get content matched and lose monetization. Afaik, when content is matched, it doesn't give a copyright strike. It either causes the video to be unplayable, unplayable in certain regions, or will lose monetization. Copyright strikes only really happen when someone manually files a copyright claim on a video, which does indeed happen, unfortunately. Copyright strikes are obviously the one that can heavily impact your channel in a ton of ways.

[@seanhamilton4169]

He should have gotten permission to use that copyrighted content that was displayed in the video!!!

[@aoe9015]

@@seanhamilton4169 It is under fair use

[@koljolat]

Like the movie industry doesn't make enough money. Greed pastards.

[@CaesarNeptuneStudios]

The soundtrack on the 2D Zelda CDi games is actually really good and is a thing many people overlook. Check it out it’s really cool and the best part of the game.

[@jetfrog4574]

And the Gameplay!

[@atarileaf]

I loved that Information Society album. Since I was a big Star Trek fan I loved that they incorporated lines from the old series in their songs

[@sakarik6527]

13:48 "you missed that one, try another"

[@poble]

nice schüt

[@ioratv]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/aom7fqZpe7RoZq8

[@ghoulbuster1]

vineErnhern try another

[@Isaacandjed]

jermaPluto

[@Magestig]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought of this!

[@pronintendogamer3123]

Mario: Nice of the princess to invite us over for a picnic, eh, Luigi? Luigi: I hope she made lots of spaghetti!

[@Moviesxp]

Mario:Hey Peach! Peach:hi. *gives spaghetti and PIZZA PIE*

[@ZeldagigafanMatthew]

ALL TOASTERS TOAST TOAST!

[@ConorDaRobin]

Mario: Luigi, look!

[@user-gk4jp6lt2b]

*In earrape* NICE OF THE PRINCESS TO INVITE US OVER FOR A PICNIC *_GAY_* LUIGI? I HOPE SHE MADE LOSTA SPAGHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETI

[@amandelli7778]

With Spicy Meatballs! 😁

[@Andersljungberg]

I remember that they showed video on one of these in a store and and I was very impressed with the pure colors in the picture. much cleaner colors than on VHS and even live analogue TV. in Europe, Philips used scart RGB. thus a cable connection that separated red green and blue. And of course the TV would have a black screen and the screen would be flat

[@C64C]

A SCART cable also has pins for composite and S-video signals. Some cables don't even have all of the 21 pins connected - if the source was VHS, for example, it doesn't matter because the cable/connector can't make the original source signal any better. With DVD you could get true RGB signal, so the high-quality SCART cable is needed (if one doesn't go with component video, VGA or HDMI of course).

[@nintendude85]

I remember music with graphics was attempted again in the mid 2000s with DVD audio. It was supposed to have surround sound, lyrics, and often music videos. I remember when Weird Al's album "Straight Outta Lynnwood" came in the short lived "Dual Disc" format, where one side was the CD and the other DVD-A. Pretty sure I only used the DVD side once. I hated that format and was glad it died. It didn't work in some CD players, and it felt heavier than an average disc so I'm sure it caused extra strain on the players that it did work in. Ended up burning a 1:1 copy of the CD side so I could play it in more devices. Dave if you ever want to do a video on the DualDisc format I'll gladly provide you some material lol.

[@X_Baron]

Weird Al seems to have been somewhat of a pioneer in weird new formats.

[@sinisterone4673]

Enhanced cds lol… I have a lot of those and never once utilized it lol

[@sinisterone4673]

@@X_Baron well he is Weird 🤣

[@JoSephGD]

"Nice of the 8-Bit Guy to make a video about the CDi, eh Luigi?" "I hope he includes us in the video!"

[@nathangitz2674]

"Luigi, look!" (Gets the letter on the wall) "It's from KZbin!"

[@gab_v250]

CD-i: is mentioned the Nintendo games that became and endless source of YTPs and memes: whomst has awaken the ancient ones

[@linkfreeman1998]

Oh yes. I could remember that. Even I used a very little bit of it in my own very first YTP. And would probably stay that way as I actually like Link.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

Nintendo actually had nothing to do with them. They simply licensed the characters (not the series, but the characters) to Phillips as part of their agreement to develop a CD addon for the SNES. That's why the games don't use The Legend of Zelda, or Super Mario Bros names. They didn't have the rights to that. They only had the rights to Link, Zelda, Mario, Luigi, and Peach IIRC. Just the characters themselves. And Nintendo had zero involvement in the games.

[@yalsonnoorcahayapratama3775]

2:56 James Rolfe also complaining about these port location.

[@bigdog8302]

SVCD comes to mind. From what I remember it was somewhat popular over in Asia, had a resolution of 480x480, the video was encoded using MPEG-2, and it was produced on CD media.

[@antdude]

I remember seeing a CD-i in my high school's art class. My teacher used it to show art stuff. Heh, a few people played video games on it. I remember its TV ads.

[@MatthewWaltonWalton]

I remember an art lesson where the teacher wheeled out a TV on a trolley with a CD-i player and showed us a number of paintings on a Photo CD to explain a few things. Would work better today with a big screen and HD but it was just about sufficient at the time! Very slow navigation though, I remember that. I guess that would've been around 1994 or 1995.

[@CODMarioWarfare]

Laserdisc was often used in this role as well. When I got a couple of LD players that were lying around my high school, it came with CAV disks, each frame of which was a photo for the science teacher to display on the TV.

[@MatthewWaltonWalton]

@@CODMarioWarfare the only time I've ever seen a laserdisc was the player for the Domesday project for which it was the data storage format - it being a bit before the CD-ROM. A cunning mixture of data and video content, those things. And so big and shiny! I was much impressed.

[@danieldaniels7571]

CODMarioWarfare I used to have an encyclopedia on a LaserDisc that worked like that.

[@Sedokun]

"It was never really intended to be a video game console...It was supposed to be a media center for your living room. Sort of like XBox One of the day." (c)

[@radioactive.redwood]

i read that right as he said it

[@coskuarsiray]

yours is one of the best channels on youtube. thanks for the effort spent here.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

I remember my Weird Al - Running with scissors CD had a like short movie on it and I watched it over and over again. ALSO: Back in 1999 I had a Power Mac 6100 w/DOS card and in order to play mpeg videos I used the Weird Al CD. The CD had a Quicktime MPEG extension (in order to play movies) and I copied it to the extensions folder in MacOS. I remember using random CD-ROM's for the extensions that they came with. You have to remember that in the 80's and 90's a lot of Mac formatted CD-ROM's were also start up discs because even back then hard drives and plenty of storage space were not in everyone's computer. Those System Folders on those discs were awesome cause you could copy them and boot up your mac with a burned CD or external SCSI Iomega Zip and Jazz drives. [crying like a baby] "I miss my old Macintosh collection"

[@bobblum5973]

I have that Weird Al CD with the SECRET FILE! folder/directory. I was excited when I found it myself (kind of like when I found the undocumented MS-DOS command TRUENAME).

[@syloui]

Those random System Folders found on CDs i used to be able to get from the library were a godsend for troubleshooting when I tinkered a little too much as a kid. Collecting different versions of extensions included with software and trying all of them out was a fun past time

[@mikel6989]

The Korn life is peachy album has the adidas video on it, pretty awesome discovery, made me go thru all my cds back in the day and tried them on my computer trying to find something else

[@danieldaniels7571]

Mike L what I hate is how many of those have programs that just play songs or videos off websites that ceased to exist years ago and are now completely useless

[@Kylefassbinderful]

@@syloui DUDE! me too, I would bring home another old macintosh system and use some random CD or CD-ROM as a boot disc. I remember when I came across the Quicktime-MPEG extension. I was so stoked cause I was now able to watch videos on my mac. I think I had the PowerMac 6100/66 with the DOS card and Windows 95 on it at some point. Apple's OS were so easy to install and troubleshoot, lol that all changed with OS X.

[@blakegriplingph]

VCDs were quite popular in Asia during the 90s to early 2000s. I remember my dad owning a shoddy little Chinese VCD player once. It was multi-standard and defaulted to PAL iirc which we had to switch to NTSC as that was the standard we're using. Karaoke discs were pretty common, with the stereo audio being cleverly used for separating vocals from the instrumental, and yeah bootlegs were also all the rage - these were pressed ones made in illicit replicating plants instead of burned ones in later years. While the format was largely ignored in the States due to it being overshadowed by DVD, here in Asia it was cheap and readily available. Apparently people at the time didn't mind coming in front of the TV just so they could swap discs which would be even more inconvenient if it was a longer epic such as _Titanic_ or _Lord of the Rings._

[@nixfishing3951]

Man whenever I’m feeling down, I love watching your videos, keep up the good work👍

[@shibolinemress8913]

Love your intro music; it's so bright and cheery, and always makes me smile! 🙂👍

[@Retro_Sorcerer]

I literally bought a CDI yesterday, cannot wait for it to arrive.

[@fattiger6957]

Did you make sure it works. Apparently CDi's are notorious for not lasting this long. Apparently some of the components (maybe the capacitors or the on board battery) are prone to degrade.

[@Retro_Sorcerer]

@@fattiger6957 Apparently the tray and spindle need repair, but that's a simple fix. I think its always more fun to have a project though as opposed to something that works straight out of the box. I'm dreading the timer chip repair though.

[@Retro_Sorcerer]

@João Maverick A Phillips cd-i 210.

[@TonyHoyle]

I remember working on the early versions of Cluedo (Clue in the US). It was a horrid system to work on.. It was unmodified OS/9 and the tools were very immature, we basically had to rewrite everything from the CD mastering software to the SDK because the supplied stuff from philips was.. bad.. In those days to burn a CD (a blank cost £50) you had to master it to raw* format and send it directly to the burner (from a Sun Workstation supplied by Philips, no internet back then though).. which was bolted to an external wall to stop vibration, and if a lorry went past it'd destroy the burn.. we wasted a *lot* of money on bad burns. When I left we were still working on trying to get the board (a graphic about 4 times bigger than the memory!) to stream piecemeal off the drive without it stuttering. No idea if they ever fixed that.. I've never actually seen a finished version. * Really raw - you had to prescramble it.. data on a CD isn't written the way it's read, the bits are moved around to help reliability, there are prescribed inter block and gaps, etc. When a modern CD talks about 'raw' reading they're not really at all, since that layer is built in to the hardware now.

[@TonyHoyle]

I'm surprised it was so heavily marketed in the US... never saw an advert for it in the UK, it mostly sat around in the back of Tandy next to the CD+G machine. By the time I stopped working on it CD-ROM was starting to become a thing, and although it still required expensive video decoders (and eyebleedingly expensive encoding - remember PCs couldn't even decode at the time let alone encode, so you had to send video off to agencies to have it encoded) it was kind of obvious where the market was going.

[@anthonybradley1555]

hi i just want to say for all the difficulties in producing the cluedo games they were really good for their times and whoever cast the live action scenes got really good actors like joan simms and angus mcinnes . i seem to recall was in a game for british petroleum making the grade??? i used to have that years ago although it never worked well on my cdi.

[@shanekeulen4874]

My parents brought home the magnavox branded version. And I think I’m total we had maybe 5 discs for it. I used the encyclopedia a lot for homework.

[@JRthepyroguy]

Love your videos 8-bit guy. Very educational. Thank you.

[@cllewis1]

11:17 - David (along with all of us) has forgotten how leisurely front-load VHS players' loading merchanisms were.

[@EricLS]

Chris Lewis yeah, he was jamming that sucker in there lol.

[@vwestlife]

On some VCRs you have to push in the tape almost all the way by hand, while on others all you need to do is give it a slight nudge and then it will automatically pull the tape is. Looks like he was used to the former type but was using the latter type of VCR.

[@jaakkopontinen]

Hehe true. Just let the machine do it's robotic stuff. Awesome devices!

[@octoman_games]

I remember the show "Double Dare" on Nickolodeon had a Maganavox CD-i version for the winners back in the 90's

[@davidburton5646]

Love your vidz bro, keep up the good work!!!

[@cvbabc]

This is one of the great things about 8-Bit Guy, he researches and compiles an entertaining video about the history of something I wouldn't ordinarily care about.

[@RestlessYankee]

CD+G was much more common for karaoke, and is still used for that to this day.

[@JessHull]

OMG you answered a life long question I always had. I remember playing Tetris at a block buster demo station when I was a kid and I thought it was so cool with its realistic background and nice music. and I never knew what console that was and years later assumed it was PS1, well a couple years later when I got a PS1 I bought several tetris' trying to find that one but never did and eventually gave up. But now I know!

[@Ss0oUuLl]

14:40 "the original NES version is probably my favourite" *cough* Electronica 60M *cough*

[@luisluiscunha]

BurnCycle was amazing. And the Art titles were very, very, good: Harvest of the Sun, for example. It had its time. We were lucky to have the experience in the 90s, and being here to remmember, in the 2020's.

[@daakrolb]

I remember it so well also! So “advanced!” Such cutting edge tech! Magical! But what a fail... too fancy and expensive for its day...

[@puppetmaster634]

Ok

[@BavarianM]

@Lassi Kinnunen Hmmm the games look great on my 29inch Trinitron I'm enjoying it alot

[@ocelot_the_dragon]

@@puppetmaster634 why do people like you even comment on anything? It’s beyond the bare minimum, and you offer absolutely nothing

[@yaboidustin2447]

@@ocelot_the_dragon true. If you don't have something to add then just don't comment

[@henryatkinson1479]

Last time I was this early the airport still was an integral part of your network...

[@kandigloss6438]

thanks for that link to the CDG museum, watched a bit of Firesign Theater's Eat or be Eaten, that's a trip, lol

[@MrHristoB]

This was an amazing and exciting back in the days, I've had a chance to use a full Philips set when I lived in The Netherlands around 1997, CD-i, TV, receiver and all bells and whistles. Brings great memories.. Thank you for mentioning it!!!

[@Coderjo.]

"VHS was incapable of S-video by its very nature". This isn't true. It's just that most players didn't have the port. The signal is recorded on the tape as separate luma and chroma signals (as separate FM signals being recorded through the same head), though, and a Super-VHS deck can certainly output those from a normal VHS tape. (As can some higher-end VHS decks that may be out there)

[@danieldaniels7571]

Coderjo yeah, that was a “wait, what” moment for me as well. The s-video standard was originally made for VHS. Almost every VCR I’ve owned since S-VHS has that port and it helps greatly with standard VHS tapes depending on the TV.

[@TheDrunkenPL]

There are more bulls**t facts in this video unfortunately :/

[@FinalBaton]

@Coderjo while chroma and luma are stored separately on VHS, their bandwith is so low that there's no gain to be made. Besides, what's used as source here is a composite video one, so even though it's stored separately on the tape, it's still for all intense and purposes, composite video. because the deck sees composite video and it then separates it for storage. It's not as if you're inputing S-video on the tape... even if you use an S-video input. The best VHS players players do not even have S-Video output. If we look at the reference, which is probably Sony's SVO line of broadcast-grade decks, the SuperVHS models do not produce as good a picture as the standard deck equipped with composite only. for regular VHS tapes.

[@Andersljungberg]

Super VHS = S-VHS

[@Andersljungberg]

s -VHS output had the purpose of getting higher resolution in the TV from super VHS tapes . At that time, many televisions had bad filters, which may have resulted in a resolution of 330 lines. although the most exclusive televisions they had something called digital comb filter that could provide up to 380 line resolution in practice. And the difference you saw in the test image. now it could even say the smallest pattern in the test image. even super VHS recorders had comb filters in their tuners

[@MitchellShilling]

14:17 I used to love Richard Scarry growing up, mainly because of Busytown! :D

[@jdaywork2693]

Neat to hear in detail more about this unit!

[@McRocket]

I enjoyed this. I previously knew nothing of OR had forgotten about it. Thank you. ☮

[@GeorgTheGr8]

If only this technology had been more successful, we'd have a sequel to the award winning CD-i Zelda by now.

[@pqrstzxerty1296]

It did it was sold and became the playstation one

[@Gideon_Judges6]

Weren't there already 2 of them?

[@-taz-]

If you want a worthy sequel, just take a dump in a paper bag.

[@masync183]

@@Gideon_Judges6 yep only 2 and no more, theres no need to look for anything else because there were only ever 2

[@GiordanDiodato]

well we have a spiritual successor now

[@JeanLoupRSmith]

OH my, so many memories. The CD-i was my de-facto "computer" / games console when I was in my late teens. That was the time before Desktop PCs were a little more affordable. Even then the unit was rather expensive when it was purchased for me as a present. When I think about how much it was sold for at a flea market a few years ago just to clear out space at my parents' house, it makes me cry a little bit inside. And no, it wouldn't have been realistic for me to hang on to it, despite the memories. And as pointed out, it wasn't just a gaming platform. I had some other more educational CD-is which were great like a guitar learning disc I forgot the name of, I had an encyclopedia I think and a video CD of Queen's music videos from Greatest Hits 1 and 2. My favourite game was Flashback, which is a sequel to Another World. One of the few games I actually finished. There was some kind of dinosaur one I can't recall the name of (Lost Eden, had to google it) which was quite good, and yes some others were not as good but it was a fun diverse platform. Can't disagree on the controller though, it was rather poor. Though mine was slimmer than the one you demonstrated, probably because it was a continental Europe model, which also used the SCART socket system at the back instead of those antenna ports (I think). Thanks for this episode Dave, that was a good trip down memory lane :)

[@JopieHaargel]

I played Lost Eden on pc! Thought it was great back then, but when I recently watched a let's play of it, I realized it has not aged gracefully...

[@goclunker]

Jean-Loup Rebours-Smith i feel sorry for you

[@JeanLoupRSmith]

@@goclunker lol, why exactly?

[@danieldaniels7571]

Did the Queen disc allow you to interact with the music, or was it just music videos on a VCD? I ask because Peter Gabriel and Todd Rundgren each put out actual CD-i specific releases where you were able to interact with and manipulate the music and video.

[@JeanLoupRSmith]

@@danieldaniels7571 As far as I recall they were just a catalogue of their music videos, no interaction there. I do remember something from Peter Gabriel now that you mention it though

[@robindegroot7944]

It was so cool to see these games again on the CDi. I can still recall renting it in a local video rental store in the Netherlands a couple of weekends.

[@ssdravidian]

I just love the intro song that you have for your channel !!!!!

[@makaylaserniotti1474]

Ah yes, exactly what I needed during my self isolation. Thank you David!

[@versedbridge4007]

😆 yup same here

[@Desmk2312]

8-bit guy Made video about Philips Cd-i My brain: *I h o p e s h e M a d e l o t s o f s p a g h e t t i !*

[@authorlilhyz7121]

Op

[@aydenmarietta4906]

“Sears which doesn’t sell any electronics anymore, but that’s a topic for another episode.” Little did I know that it would be an actual episode about America’s electronics stores.

[@williamreid6255]

Lol I was just thinking that

[@darojax]

Your videos are really great, thanks!

[@rizkaarifiandi5670]

i remember that GameSack also praised CD-i's Tetris, because of the Yani's music hahaha

[@xenaretos]

And VCDs stayed for a long time in the Asian market. I still have a few bought in India in 2004 (and it didn't feel like they were getting obsolete at that time - just a cheaper common alternative to DVDs).

[@paulclarke8184]

Hey! You showed a clip of the "Atlantis: The Last Resort" game, which I wrote when I worked at Philips Research Labs in Redhill, UK. Glad you showed that as it was very fun and very challenging to write!!!

[@HanZie82]

Oh man i can remember that device. A buddy had one. We did play alot of them shooting game(s) with the light-gun, and i can remember seeing That wrestler dude. It was so much ahead of its time, its unthinkable now. But mostly it was used over other devices because the amount of Dutch language games were amazing for that device. Awesome video, love the in depth look and also the guests telling their story was a nice welcome surprise.

[@poble]

"nice of the princess to invite us over for a picnic, gay luigi?"

[@TonHet1]

Luigi, look. It's from Bowser.

[@gab_v250]

@@TonHet1 Dear pesky plumbers, the Koopalings and I have taken over this Kingdom

[@philipperossel1888]

@@gab_v250 The princess is now a permanent guest at one of my seven Koopa hotels! I dare you to find her if you can!

[@poble]

@DiamondDude11 [Puro] and you've gotta help us!

[@tohopes]

IF YOU NEED INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO GET THROUGH THE HOTELS, CHECK OUT THE ENCLOSED INSTRUCTION BOOK.

[@Tahngarthor]

"i'll get a copyright strike" "i'll get a copyright strike" Whatever happened to fair use? If you're critiquing something you should be able to show more than 2 seconds of it, just not the whole thing. Is YT really being that aggressive? I remember when you used to be able to have a a whole scene or a good chunk of one and you could talk over it and that would be totally fine.

[@themixgenius1993]

Some of the record companies like UMG are just like being a complete a**holes or something, copyright claiming/striking everyone's video even it's under fair use, just to "protect" their property.

[@Tahngarthor]

​@@themixgenius1993 I also don't understand why they don't handle it the way Twitch does, for example, where if it detects copyright audio they just mute it in the recording rather than punish you or delete the video.

[@Beefster09]

It's more like what didn't happen to fair use. Legally, fair use is only a defense that can be upheld in court.

[@masync183]

@Nigel Cam yeah the algorithm for that somehow became much better and much worse at the same time. its better at recognizing potential infractions but has 0 idea of context.

[@solhsa]

Tom Scott just posted a 45 minute video explaining what happened.

[@LowgaenSchmidt]

My mother had one of these and she picked up lots of interesting games that I used to spend hours messing around with. They included that Tetris and Richard Scarry game you showed, but I also played ones that had Sesame Street, the Berenstain Bears, and the rage-inducing Wacky World of Miniature Golf with Eugene Levy. Also checked out stuff on the Treasures of the Smithsonian and Philips Golden Oldies Jukebox discs as well.

[@djwice8171]

Actually the photo format on a cd-i was really brilliant : it contained one foto in different sizes in one file. The smallest first. And the cool thing was that the next up in size was actually only adding pixels to the smaller one. And so on. So you get more and more detail the longer you wait. And can see the full image quickly in raw format. Really concept that I didn't see back in most new image formats.

[@TheAznCoderPro]

So it’s basically progressive decoding? Neat!

[@Claro1993]

The thing about Video CDs, just like laserdiscs didn’t took off in America but was hugely successful in Asia, in-fact you can still buy contemporary movies on the format to this day.

[@digiowl9599]

I seem to recall the vcd and svcd was briefly popular in piracy circles before xvid came along and did to video what mp3 did to music...

[@linksmith1057]

For more details on all these different CD standards, the Technology Connections channel has an excellent video on all the different rainbow book standards.

[@8wealthyone8]

Excellent show. Please make more. Your good!

[@jshrawder49]

Wow that was a blast form the past. Lol great vlog!! Thanks for doing all these videos.

[@AlienFrequency]

I remember wanting this thing as a kid, until I saw the price.

[@compyislife]

I'd just like to point out that, like Dragon's Lair, Mad Dog Mccree was in the arcade first. Thanks for this comprehensive and admirably objective look at the CD-i, I learned a lot.

[@Da_80s_Ruled]

Great video! i loved my Cd-i back in the 90's Space Ace and Battleship were my favourites. There was a high end game coming out before the CDi died called "down in the dumps" but got cancelled by Philips.

[@frankandstuff]

I love the intro song! It just brings a smile to my face.

[@jputtrexx]

I remember they had a tent set up for the CDi at the second Wooodstock, I still have the badge they gave out.

[@Boojakascha]

Loved the video, Dave! But I am afraid you still have a misconception about VHS. It stores luma and chroma separate. You can indeed output it as s-video, it's not "impossible." Apart from S-VHS devices there were other VHS devices with s-video output such as Hi8/VHS tandem machines. The Sony SLV-T2000MN is a good example. What you mean to say is that the compression on chroma is very high, and that quality at the source is similar for composite video and what is obtainable from VHS. Outputting it through real world cables and mixing signals (!) in one case is a totally different story. The whole concept of component video signals, to which s-video also belongs, relies in keeping signals separate.

[@SianaGearz]

Saying that luma and chroma are separate is stupid and wrong. They are part of one single signal on VHS and on SVHS both, just like composite. However on composite, chroma is encoded on top of luma, corresponding to the broadcast format, but downconverted for channel independence. On VHS and SVHS, this encoding would not be stable or suitable, so it's the other way around, called colour-under, the luma signal is upshifted on top of chroma instead. So indeed S-Video connection for both VHS and S-VHS makes technical sense, since it allows to avoid merging and separating these signals an extra couple times.

[@danieldaniels7571]

Yeah, he lost me there too. All high end VHS VCRs has S-Video output on them, and anyone who had decent home theater systems back then knew it made a noticeable difference to use it.

[@FinalBaton]

@Boojakascha while chroma and luma are stored separately on VHS, their bandwith is so low that there's no gain to be made. Besides, what's used as source here is a composite video one, so even though it's stored separately on the tape, it's still for all intense and purposes, composite video. because the deck sees composite video and it then separates it for storage. It's not as if you're inputing S-video on the tape... even if you use an S-video input. The best VHS players players do not even have S-Video output. If we look at the reference, which is probably Sony's SVO line of broadcast-grade decks, the SuperVHS models do not produce as good a picture as the standard deck equipped with composite only. for regular VHS tapes.

[@Boojakascha]

@@FinalBaton Luma has a high bandwith. VHS tapes were also used to store PC data on Luma.

[@FinalBaton]

@@Boojakascha its still pretty low bandwith, compared to a full luma signal like that of SVideo. I think it's like halved OTTOMH. My point still stands : SVideo outputs on VCRs do not make good use of the color under separate storage of VHS. They don't look better than composite out from a reference broadcast VCR.

[@marcusphoenixish]

I remember wanting one of these so badly. Seeing top gun and star trek 6 being on demo in the big electronic stores and being blown away lol.

[@PeriklisMoulis]

Still have my cdi like new. Love that machine. So many memories and many hours with 7th guest and some other great titles for the time. Video cds from U2, Sting and many more and spending a lot of time with encyclopedias. Also we love with the family the fact that we can see our photos in the TV back then.

[@polaris911]

I used to make VCDs back in the day and play them on my DVD player. Fun fact: since DVDs are encoded with MPEG-2, some DVD players even supported non-standard VCDs encoded in MPEG-2, meaning better picture quality than a standard MPEG-1 VCD.

[@The8BitGuy]

Indeed. I used to make VCDs as well so I could play movies on my DVD player. And yes, I made the "XVCD" as well, which used twice the resolution and MPEG2 since my player supported it.

[@VladoT]

I remember when DVD players started to support MPEG4 DivX encoded CDs, it was a DVD quality movie on a CD. However in recent years I see full HD movie of Bluray quality fit on a single CD by using mkv matroshka codec, I don't know how is this even possible.

[@GBOAC]

those were called SVCD's

[@dangoswick]

Yep, I had that Fleetwood Mac CD and somehow played it back then, maybe with my PS1.

[@matthewJ142]

You have such a cool CD collection!

[@Agamemnon2]

Oh man, I remember the photo CD. My dad was a serious aquarium hobbyist who ended up writing some books on tropical fish, and for those projects he ended up getting several of his rolls of film developed into Photo CD format to make the layout process easier for whoever he hired to do it. I remember being really impressed by the quality of the maximum resolution, the negatives were scanned in at something seemingly astronomical like 3000x2000 (this was back in the 1024x768 desktop resolution days). They were the first recordable CDs I'd ever seen, a fact which astonished me at the time, since we were still a few years from consumer-accessible CD-writers.

[@SleepyAdam]

I believe a lot of karaoke players still use the same CD-G tech to display lyrics as you sing.

[@thatguyontheright1]

And Laserdisc later got it as LD-G, mostly for Subtitles for Japanese releases of western films.

[@Shamino0]

You are absolutely correct. All CD-based karaoke players use the CD+G format to embed the animated lyrics into the music.

[@Turnoutburndown]

Omg those videos that play behind karaoke songs do look like FMV cutscenes!

[@meetoo594]

My old megacd played them as well. Apart from lyrics it wasnt very impressive. Was fun going through cds to see what random stuff was encoded on them, quite a few didnt advertise the cd+g bit at all.

[@danieldaniels7571]

Those karaoke players will also play the CD+G graphics from music discs. I have the Information Society, Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac and a sampler from Sega.

[@kenm2709]

You are one the last people in my reality still producing wholesome content, thank you David.

[@BabyGonzo5]

I have a CDi player in the attic. Light Gun and controller. Mad dog and a few film’s. Films were excellent quality and sound.

[@1nzgninja]

Heya from New Zealand clint, stuck at home buiding socket 7/slot 1 dos machines with your inspiration..love the vids, keep up the good work! stay safe..

[@oldgamecafe]

5:23 Do not turn compact discs in the cases, several circular scratches can damage disc permanently

[@danieldaniels7571]

Aldo Enrique I cringed hard at that too

[@ctrlaltrees]

7:54 Explaining how we got our films developed in the 90s... Now I feel old!

[@quailstevens8150]

Thank you so much for this video! Especially the part where you talked about Mad Dog MCcree! I had wondered for years what that game was, I had played it when I went to Disney World back in the 90’s and I could never remember the name of the game! Many thanks!!

[@antdavisonNZ]

I authoured CD-i content in the 90s. Development platform was a single board Amiga CPU/computer-on-a- full length daughterboard and OS housed inside an Apple Mac. At that time, we worked on MS-DOS and windows PC's running a DOS version of 3DStudio and a windows version of Photoshop, so a bit of file shuffling and required the use of three or four different OS'es and multiple cross platform networking which was rare, slow, and expensive at the time. Specifying FMV locations from a video stream was a nightmare ... you specified the in and out points via hex offset, and you had to build the CD-i image to check that ... so it took a looooong time to authour interactive video content ... bleeding edge at the time. The PAL players we used had a SCART-RGB output, so output quality was better than the NTSC s-video only models