ODDWARE: ReelMagic - The 1995 Full Motion Video Experience

[@mushroomsamba82]

Dunno how I'm just discovering this channel now. Come on KZbin algorithm, you know damn well I love this shit.

[@bsdjunkie1805]

The first MS Encarta tiny vids blew me away, it seemed like alien tech at the time

[@zeromega]

Encarta was the best thing 🙏

[@kobayashimaru8114]

Encarta was my go-to source for book reports lol

[@calsavestheworld]

Remember they had a really cool video on Soundgarden?

[@migfredcastillo3706]

I just want this story to be told.... my daughter is in her 20s now. She is so used to modern electronics, she once stepped outside with her friends and straight out said" Oh wow, the clouds look sooooooo 3D". The complete opposite of how I reacted to the video on a computer. Thanks for your time 🙏. I just thought that was funny. Maybe it's just me.

[@mlthmp]

I had totally forgotten Encarta. Had '95 lol

[@timothystevenhoward]

mine was the 1995 Weezer video showing off MPEG by playing Buddy Holly in Windows. It was a life changing moment.

[@averyvaliant]

I could be wrong, but wasn't there both an AVI and MPEG version of those videos? the MPEG one had better video quality, but the AVI had better sound. I'm not sure if this was from the Windows CD or maybe one of those ATI Mach 64 cards that came out with MPEG chip.

[@scherge]

I remember reading about the Reel Magic in the German PC Games issue 02/1994 and being blown away by it. I always wanted one but never could afford one. Thanks to your video, which seems to be the only good one on YT, I can at least see what I missed back in the days. Thanks ^^

[@joshpayne4015]

Being of a certain age (ahem) I fondly remember when the multimedia PC craze happened and how excited I was to get my first MPEG decoder card in my PC (in the days before this acceleration was baked-in to video cards). There was a local PC shop that offered a name-brand MPEG decoder card + DVD ROM drive for a better price than I could buy it for myself online, so I took it to them and they did the installation in about a day. I was blown away by the ability to watch broadcast quality video from DVDs and video CDs. I feel like that was a game-changing technological advancement that people take for granted today.

[@psychoticgiraffe]

These are gems today even, apparently a rare version of under a killing moon exists that uses the card

[@DK640OBrianYT]

And look no further than when in 1997, mighty IBM released the ThinkPad 770 notebook-series. The first with true DVD-playback (Full Resolution PAL/NTSC from a swapable DVD-drive module) and plug-in hardware MPEG1/MPEG2-card called DEVA, with Composite/S-Video In/Out + Dolby Digital Ac3 and HiFi-Stereo In/Out on the notebook itself. Magnificent piece of engineering.

[@negirno]

I remember borrowing the MPEG-enhanced version of _Horde_ from a friend and couldn't play it on our PC because it required a ReelMagic decoder card. As for newer FMV game titles: Ashens made one here in KZbin called "Who Stole My Sofa" which made use of the overlay captions feature. It can't be played anymore since Google removed the feature, but the video is still available in non-interactive form.

[@robertdaone]

Remember seeing all of this along with working with ray tracing back in the late 80s and early 90s on my Amiga.

[@DanielVerberne]

Return to Zork .... my goodness .... I remember. I'd known nothing of the earlier 'Zork' game(s), so it was bizarre, but wow what a trip back in memory lane.

[@klaushergesheimer8602]

I loved the Sierra FMV adventures back in the day like Gabriel Knight 2 and Phantasmagoria.

[@AttilaSVK]

The first ever video I saw on a computer was in 1996, on a 100 MHz 486DX4. It was the music video for Edie Brickell's Good Times, bundled on the Windows 95 CD. It was the 15fps AVI version, not the 30fps MPEG one, that was only included on the Windows 95 OSR2 CD, IIRC.

[@klaushergesheimer8602]

Nostalgia Nerd also mentioned this video in his Windows 95 Weezer episode. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fIDPamechJxrpM0

[@VelvetTeacake]

7th Guest, Voyeur & Late Shift all in one video? Amazing!

[@interlace84]

A nice follow-up would be the next-gen MPEG2 cards like the Creative DxR3, had one back in the day with a p200mmx. It had a very nice upscaler (to 1600x1200) with some hw postprocessing and great output quality to old CRT TVs. I was blown away watching our first DVDs with that thing :)

[@jasonblalock4429]

One of the reasons VCDs became popular in some areas of the world is that they stood up to high heat and humidity *much* better than VHS. In a hot swampy area like SE Asia, VHS would basically rot on the shelf. So VCD won the format war. (Not to mention being considerably cheaper than VHS too.)

[@AllboroLCD]

Funny, the Matrox Mystique handled MPEG-1 pretty well by itself. Better than most decoders of the time really.

[@bobfromsoireegames4309]

Great video, Dan

[@GadgetUK164]

Wow, this is a blast from the past! I had a ReelMagic card when they first came out. It kind of struggled with the single speed Mitsumi I had at the time. I had to upgrade to a dual speed drive before it was watchable. Do you remember the follow up product when DVD hit? I got one of those Real Magic MPEG2 decoders around the time I had a Celeron I think.

[@NumptyMcNumptyface]

The Hollywood Plus you mean? I had as part of a Sony DVD ROM kit which included Jumanji on DVD. I later bought the remote control add-on (IR receiver connected to a serial port) as well. And an OEM version of the same card shipped with Creative Labs' DVD playback kit.

[@GadgetUK164]

@@NumptyMcNumptyface Yes, that's the one (I think)! It was pretty cool being able to watch DVD on the PC =D A year or two later you didn't need that card lol.

[@greggv8]

I was given a Diamond Multimedia MPEG2 decoder + 1x DVD-ROM kit new in the box around 1999. The PCI card was a truly full length beast, like 1984 PC full length. Diamond introduced the kit in 1997 and promptly tried to ignore it ever existed thanks to the new Pentium III's demonstrated ability to not need a hardware MPEG2 decoder. The decoder only worked with the included DVD player software, which was utter crap. It had no ability to maximize its window or go full screen. It could be manually resized, showing off the hardware's ability to resize the video. Why no other software could use it was because for some crazy reason Diamond decided to completely ignore DirectX, which could have been used to easily enable any other video software to use the card. Even worse, the drivers and player would only work properly in original Windows 95. Even installing the 95a update would break it! There never was any software update, just a download of exactly what came on the CD-ROM. What it looked like was Diamond had started work on the thing just as soon as they got wind of DVD-ROM drives going to become available for PCs, and chose to operate completely disconnected from everything "on the outside", including updates to Windows. Then when 1997 rolled around and the new generation of CPUs obliterated the need for all their work, they shipped the crap they had in stock and washed their hands of the product. Dunno why they wouldn't have gone back to the coding dungeon to do DirectX drivers, they could have re-positioned it as an upgrade for older PCs without the sheer CPU grunt to software decode DVD MPEG2. MPEG2 decoder cards from other companies did live on for a while with exactly that kind of marketing, and even for systems that could software decode DVD but only if that's the only thing they were doing. An MPEG2 card could enable a PC to play DVD in the foreground while you had it doing some other CPU intensive task in the background, like compressing a ripped DVD video to MPEG1 for burning a Super Video CD. Really shouldn't need to mention that the other MPEG2 card sellers provided DirectX compatible drivers, and they worked with newer versions of Windows.

[@xtlm]

It's funny that FMV was so impressive...when we would watch TV, VHS, or go to the movies and see something a million times better looking.

[@DanielVerberne]

The Reelmagic decoder card blew me away when my father purchased one all those many years ago. At the time, 'native' decoder performance of audio/video clips was absolutely woeful. Not only was the resolution of clips really poor, but the frame rate sucked balls. (Pardon me!) However, with the Reelmagic decoder (and suitably-encoded video files!), suddenly everything was amazing. I remember watching specially-created movie discs (I forget the format now!) that Reelmagic could decode; specifically 'The Firm', starring Tom Cruise. It was amazing to watch something so crystal clear and smooth on my PC! I think my ReelMagic came with the game, 'The Horde' and while only the FMV parts of that game were Reelmagic-related, they were very impressive.

[@rich081176uk]

I always loved the fmv era. Great time to be a gamer and have the nostalgia to look back on.

[@legbert123]

Oh i dunno about the games the glut of FMV games made me wanna puke.

[@nuttyjawa]

I remember being so disappointed in my mega CD - Sonic CD was amazing, but everything else I had was terrible and focused on the FMV instead of gameplay

[@legbert123]

@@nuttyjawa Ya companies ran with that FMV on the Sega CD i swear if Sega didnt allow that glut of FMV they might still be making consoles today. Well that and if they didnt release 32x

[@mikeg2491]

@@legbert123 what’s hilarious to me is for as much as gamers now make fun of fmv, you spend more time with your controller on the couch watching cutscenes in modern games than you did with the likes of sewer shark which successfully blended fmv with the gameplay. The number of QT events in games now too make Dragon’s Lair blush. I don’t need a constant pop up telling me to push triangle to toss a guy through a window. The Call of Duty franchise is a glorified movie with the same endless scripted events.

[@legbert123]

@@mikeg2491 Who is this you. I dont tend to play games with much QT and I know nothing of The call of Duty series. I like a lil narrative to punctuate 85% of the gameplay loop. I do know that I was so pissed off when I bought my $400 Sega Cd in the day with 3 games, SS and Night Trap were the first 2 I played. SS Did not successfully blend fmv with the gameplay. The FMW was horrible and The cursor was hella laggy. Oh well Night trap was worth the laughs I guess, and Eternal Champions Cd was was meh but not total shit. Fuck the Sega CD

[@TheForce1972]

Great vid Dan

[@blakegriplingph]

Regarding the recent FMV revival, the 2015 _Need for Speed_ reboot counts as one, especially when it made novel use of the format by seamessly blending in live-action footage with real time rendered models of cars in certain cutscenes.

[@dine9093]

Mid 90's seeing a BBC micro in the school library running some sort of first person google maps like VCD was my first WOW moment, yes OK the BBC was doing nothing but input, but being in control of something that would take google 20 odd years to bring to the market was mind blowing! Great work Dan, keep the dream alive.

[@mrtiff99]

Sounds to me like the BBC Doomsday project?

[@dine9093]

@@mrtiff99 Yes that was it! Core memories.

[@mrtiff99]

@@dine9093 Yep, I was also blown away by it. I remember thinking it would be amazing to have something like that in the home some day, now i carry it around on device that fits in my pocket, mad!

[@AmigaCammy]

I think my best FMV memory was playing Sherlock Holmes - Consulting Detective on my Amiga CD32. I would love it if we could port some of the newer FMV games to the CD32 now that we have some wonderful CDXL tools like AGABlaster. There are a few FMV games that are playable on KZbin for example which could work.

[@LoftechUK]

This brought back memories

[@otakujhp]

If I remember right, the DVD version of Tex Murphy Overseer worked on my Hollywood Plus.

[@terryechoes3192]

Finally, computers were able to keep up with a TV and a VCR.

[@whahappa]

I'll never forget watching the Windows 3.1 tutorial video

[@JaredBallou]

We bought a Packard Bell with a 90MHz Pentium in 1995 or so, and it came with a 10GB hard drive. About 20% of that space was taken up by an uncompressed AVI of Weezer's "Buddy Holly" music video, which actually played fast enough to be comparable to SDTV signals of the time. Coming from a 386, it totally blew me away, even if I had to delete it to fit games on it after I'd owned it a half year or so.

[@meatpockets]

I also had a Packard Bell PC from the same time. The Weezer music video was included on the Windows 95 CD-ROM and did certainly did not consume 2GB of space. In fact there were also other videos like a movie trailer, Edie Brickell music video, and a few Win95 promos.

[@omidlara4838]

never hear about reelmagic until now, but i used to use a creative pc-dvd encore to view dvd movies in my pc in time of win98

[@warre1]

I got Golden Melody branded version of the mpg2 variant marketed as dvd decoder. In the box there was RealMagic in it sticker.

[@equid0x]

Weezer on the Win95 CD was about the pinnacle of raw PC video at the time. The RealMagic bumped it up to quality rivaling or even exceeding VHS and this was quite remarkable at the time as most machines couldn't even play video. I had a VL-Bus Cirrus Logic card that had hardware acceleration for both Windows 3.1 and MPEG video. Talk about high tech! About '96 I got a Pentium-66 with 32MB RAM and I recall the CPU pegging around 90% just to play an MP3 on Windows '95 with Winamp 1.5 and nothing else open.

[@tnacreative6499]

comet in the late 80-mid 90s - wonderful childhood memories

[@WarhavenSC]

Speaking of Pentiums, my work's Audix Voicemail system just got upgraded last year from a Pentium 133 to a Pentium III 500 Mhz. The motherboard died on the old system, so they replaced it with a new one. I can hardly contemplate such speeds. Five HUNDRED megahertz. Nuts.

[@typingcat]

500? That's a lot. I was using Celeron 333 MHz.

[@Krashulka]

I had all this stuff and all the Amigas with all the accessories, was expensive back then too. To think I threw it all in the bin 20 years ago, as I had to much pc and electronic stuff lying about taking up too much room. These days the stuff I chucked away would be worth a few dollars.

[@hopmountain8523]

I can't believe it, I remember our first computer used this.

[@drruncmd]

Yeah I remember watching a made for TV series called killernet which was featured a full blown mpeg card but I really liked phantasmagoria and burncycle which were awesome at the time.

[@ezg8448]

$449 back in the day for a PC addon card is a lot. Video cards cost less then 1/2 that price, but my how times have changed.

[@edbeasant9494]

Wales interactive keeping the fmv dream alive

[@calsavestheworld]

Me in 1995: that video is too small. Me in 2022: never stops watching tiny videos on cell phone.

[@SimSimsTECHcrunch]

You're absolutely right about Video CDs (also referred to as VCDs) taking off in the Middle East. In fact, my uncle would give me VCDs whenever I would visit Egypt on vacation during the summer (my parents are originally Egyptian). They were also commonly found inside of the corner stores owned by Arabs here in the West during that time period. My hypothesis for why it took off there is because of how easy they were to make and how economical they were compared to DVDs during that time. Most people in the Middle East probably didn't have dedicated DVD players or DVD drives in their computers in the Early 2000s. Thus, it made sense to make use of existing technology.

[@Lethgar_Smith]

Back in the 90s I predicted that the computer, the TV and the phone would become a single device. I didn't predict the mobile aspect of my vision but rather a large console like machine in every person's home that would be a hub for data, entertainment and information exchange. I just didnt realize that Apple would put all of that in a handheld device. Now in today's world I am watching KZbin videos in my livingroom on a 60 inch flatscreen TV, almost like what I predicted just the phone is still separate.

[@daspec]

I still have my Creative Labs DXR3 which is a rebranded Sigma Designs Hollywood+ in fact you can use the same drivers on windows!. The biggest mistake both companies did at the time, is that they didn't put 10% more effort to make them true video accelerators for video editing, something that Fast and Miro did. I have a large collection of hardware based video accelerators from the '90s and they all work on my retro machines!

[@robertshowe2417]

I remember all of this. Love it! Please keep these up.

[@AmstradExin]

At that time...my friend had a Pentium MMX 166Mhz and a Ati Mach64. That did let us watch movies too! :D

[@hgbugalou]

I remember lusting after owning one of these in the 90s.

[@zpepgamer]

Hi Dan, I remember I got the CDTV when it came out and I got the game psyco I think it was called. I felt I was playing a movie! So I can relate to your experience, it felt like it was the future!!! I wish I kept my CDTV ☹️

[@AlphaGodDamn4]

Thanks so much for uploading. This was a super informative and interesting. Looks like tons of effort was involved.

[@kevinhanley6462]

I'd like to see you using DOSBox with ReelMagic: emulation only, no hardware, mentioning glitches.

[@martymccafferty7510]

I bought one of these in the ninties. Unlike Amiga hardware, it came with no usefull tools to allow you to program or play around with it. I was disappointed, it was expensive and I returned it to the store for my money back. Later I bought a mpeg 1 video capture card that would capture and playback mpeg1 on the TV. I used it like a DVR before they existed. I did a lot of video editing with software from Miro...i think that was the name, later it changed to Ulead. Thanks for the memories!

[@equid0x]

I had an original Hauppage WintV PCI I used to hook up a camcorder and video chat on CUSeeMe and Netmeeting at 5FPS over dialup. It was the future, man.

[@willrobinson7599]

Great video dan. I was like u even though the first fmv I seen was terrible quality it didn't matter as we knew it was just the beginning The quality just kept getting better and better , what a great time to be a gamer

[@akaJughead]

It wouldn't be a retro gaming video from a UK KZbinr if there wasn't at least one mention of Commodore and Sega, LOL.

[@StayCoolKeto]

*Great video as always, Dan! Man I miss the good old days! I was the same! I remember the PC int he school library had I think it was encarta 95 and had amazing pictures and video clips! I was just amazed!* 💪👍💻

[@psychoticgiraffe]

I had the special mpeg version that had 4x larger vid clips

[@vietguy808]

I remember tht half time clip, NBA JAM

[@Law2120]

Id love to get one of these cards to mess around with but getting the games to go along with it is the tough part.

[@bloxyman22]

No mention of Harvester?? That FMV game aged like fine wine.

[@sludgefactory241]

Damn, do I miss the frigging 90s 🙁

[@neilthomas6042]

An interesting video, it did not cross my mind at the time, and feels quaint now.

[@johnabbitt690]

What a great video, it reminds me very much of when I took my first dip into DVD playing. I couldn't afford a dedicated DVD player, they were new and very expensive. However, I could afford a Creative Labs DXR2. This was a 5x DVD drive (which I flashed to become region free!) and an MPEG2 decoder card. It also came with Wing Commander 4 and another game I can't remember, but all the video was full DVD MPEG2 quality. This was my new DVD playing setup which was clunky but worked perfectly. It outputted to my 14 inch TV via an SVideo cable. I had a piece of software which fooled Creative's DVD playing software into which region I wanted to watch. It also adjusted the colour output somehow. My TV could show NTSC but in black and white, the software did something to make it colour. Finally, I bought an IR box that was connected by serial cable so I could use a spare remote to control the PC from the other side of my bedroom. What a home cinema setup! :-)

[@equid0x]

Shit... I had an inverter running to an old PC with a stripped down Windows `95 install in the trunk of my '86 Taurus playing these songs recorded in the new Franhoeffer Music Codec (MP3) from my 1GB Seagate drive and a 10Mbit NE2000 ethernet card cabled to an NEC laptop remoted in to the PC using WinMirror playing 1000s of songs using Sonique and an ISA SB-16. I should have patented the first iPod.

[@neuro_davinci]

Comet! Lol! God that takes me back. I miss the 80s/90s, much more a time of mystery and awe in home computing and game consoles.

[@devMashcom]

I was at the World of Commodore trade show in Toronto back in 90 (or maybe 91?) and saw Great Valley Products (GVP) streaming the movie Snow White full screen on an Amiga to show how fast their SCSI controller was... by 96 I was working as a developer doing presentation software that relied on MPEG and we used RealMAGIC cards in our systems. I have a whole tub full of old cards somewhere! Lol. I also have a Panasonic CF41 486 notebook with the hardware MPEG pack that replaced the floppy drive. I think that machine was like 4 grand brand new, but when it played video it would blow minds! Those were fun days!

[@Scarafax]

My most favorite FMV game? X-Files The Game Also 7th Guest and 11th Hour are both epic.

[@psychoticgiraffe]

Those are gems I also suggest quantum gate

[@greggv8]

I had a ReelMagic VGA and sound card minus all the video and SCSI bits. SCSI? Yup, they mashed together a MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 with a VGA card, with the regular PAS 16's Trantor SCSI controller. Edit: 5:42 That card, minus the video and SCSI, is what I had. Then they made a version that was only populated with the PAS 16 parts. Why? Most likely for use with the full-up card because the PAS 16 was designed to be able to use two of them together for double the pleasure, double the fun - or double the number of playback voices or something. I never had the full version of the card but I did have a SoundBlaster and was able to set them both up and have all my DOS games able to automatically use whichever was the best sound they supported, and Windows 3.11 (the OEM only release which could run on a 286, not Windows For Workgroups 3.11) used the PAS 16. I also had 12 megs of RAM in it, 512K in DIP chips on the mainboard and the rest on three ISA cards from Micron - divided between XMS and EMS because I had some old DOS stuff that only worked with genuine hardware EMS. A note about the SCSI most PAS 16 cards had. It had no BIOS so it wasn't bootable but it was an otherwise normal SCSI controller, able to connect several devices so a CD-ROM, flatbed scanner, hard drive etc could all be daisy chained. The caveat was it was SLOW. Just fast enough for a 4x CD-ROM drive's maximum read speed.

[@gower1973]

No one in their right mind would of payed half the price of a PC just for a single add on card, no wonder they failed

[@viscuine]

i saw 7th guest in a local pc shop and consequently bought the pc just to play it. reckon that was the moment i sold my 030 a1200 to pay for it.

[@DanielVerberne]

Quick time events ... Dragon's Lair .... wow, what a frustrating game!

[@eadweard.]

What a hit of nostalgia! I'd totally forgotten that _Have I Got News for You_ used to be funny.

[@LieutLaww]

I remember getting the CD32 FMV module, came with Microcosm and Star Trek VI

[@mr2mk3]

Microcosm was identical without the FMV module right?

[@LoftechUK]

The time we used to download over a few days to get a film and using freeserve etc

[@cbluebeard]

Thank you! I'm excited to try out Return to Zork. Can the mt-32 or SC (emulators) be used with this fork? In the dosbox .conf, I've tried changing "midiconfig=" to 1 and 2, and changed the sound device in the RTZ install to mt-32, but i'm still getting the regular basic music.

[@cbluebeard]

Success! not sure why but the mt-32 emulation is working now with midiconfig=1 in .conf. And in the RTZ setup, changing audio devices to Soundblaster 16 for sound effects and mt-32 for music. Excellent! I'm REALLY excited now for a whole new RTZ experience! Thank you for making the video!

[@marccaselle8108]

I wished I had this or any other mpeg decoder card on my Packard bell legend back in 1994. I'm pretty sure PCEM doesn't have a emulated mpeg decoder card.

[@lilmonix]

9:35 Every time I see Angus Deayton, I think of Rowan Atkinson.

[@UK_Cobra]

Dunno, just seeing Marilyn Monroe digitized on the Beeb, blew me away back in the day :)

[@matthewtempest7756]

yep i still remember Star Wars: Rebel Assault thinking it was amazing! :)

[@TheSocialGamer]

REEL Magic really pushed the visuals.! Awesome upload Dan!

[@דובב.א]

Wow!!! Good Time And Best Time..

[@sergeleon1163]

Here in the Netherlands where Philips also originates from, Video CD's where also a big thing. In the time before DVD, many record stores had a decent section with Video CD's (Movies) and also many music single CD's included a Music Video.

[@MegaManNeo]

I remember browsing through one of those MPC promotion CD-ROMs real early on with the 486DX2 I had. No MPEG Encoder anywhere but it left an impression on me. It was the PlayStation when I was really impressed because between levels, I got FMV cutscenes which in case of games like Tarzan often were movie cutscenes. Pure gold.

[@Epictronics1]

Great video :)

[@alexander_mejia]

Thanks for a reminder on the emulator! I've been wanting to play these for a long time and now I know what I'll be streaming soon!

[@k001daddy]

I thought Phantasmagoria would get a mention.

[@psychoticgiraffe]

Phantasmagoria didn’t make use of the features of reelmagic, but the psychotron (not mentioned in this video) does, I did a full play through of the special reelmagic edition of it There’s also a rare version of Dune the dos game with reelmagic fmv

[@yanikkunitsin1466]

9:09 made it to market - The Horde (3do/saturn/pc). 3do version was the worst with non-standad framerate of 12 and 15

[@johnmijo]

I have one of the original ISA cards stored away some place in the attic. I was kind of lucky (if you can call it that), I worked for a local software/hardware computer retailer so I was able to purchase this at cost, but still didn't get much use :(

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

I have to say this was indeed a big deal, for me it was Civ 2. Those wonder cutscenes have just always stuck with me.

[@LSTRetroGamingVideos]

Thanks a bunch for this. When I was a kid, I always wanted to get a Sigma card just for Flash Traffic (back then not knowing how poor the game actually is). Never got one, it's nice to see it in action here.

[@psychoticgiraffe]

I actually found that game was pretty good, more paths to lose or win than I expected, I did a full playthrough of it

[@kevinhanley6462]

I was intrigued by the ReelMagic card with Return to Zork back in the day! I was surprised it was independent of the processor, so would run on a 386 or above! I've been wondering how to emulate it, but you've mentioned it can be done in DOSBox.

[@ironmaiden5658]

Interesting stuff.

[@Psiros]

I was so proud of my 100 mghz Pentium with 64 MB of RAM and 500 mb hard drive.

[@48pluto]

I bought a video grab card or something they called it?? It could play mpeg video full screen. I bought it for i think 15 dollar or something on a computer market. It had a free MPEG CD with David Bowie songs. I'm not sure.. It was fun. It worked. Thought not that much of it actually but it was a break trough in technology.

[@cappaculla]

Had one of these and several Philips cdi movies,

[@shenmeowzo]

Yes mate. Night trap and double switch remain stand out gaming experiences, even if they haven't aged well at. So cool at the time.

[@PooperScooperTrooper]

I was always amazed with the fact that I could digitise a minute or so of music on my Atari ST. I knew the future of music was on computers.

[@syrus3k]

Fmv was a cool step forward but for me 3dfx was the biggest jump

[@mlthmp]

For me.. was Phantasmagoria

[@paule6101]

Thanks Dan. I remember my dad bringing one of these home, i think someone gave it to him as it became redundant fairly quickly. We had a matrox mystique in that pc too! Takes me back.

[@HAGSLAB]

Very informative and interesting video Dan. Great work!

[@OLIV3R_YT]

I still remember being blown away by the very bad FMV intro of Microcosm on the CD32 😀

[@DeadMouseis]

awesome video play one of the movie cds with "quickview pro" dos movie player?

[@AdiSneakerFreak]

Great video as always Dan. Hope you’re doing well mate.

[@psychoticgiraffe]

I did a video on this a while back, I got one of the reelmagic cards completely sealed never touched, fascinating cards, I was able to stream the realmagic versions of flash traffic and return to zork live as well