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CD-i File Player ?

Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:43 pm
by opt_fr_
Hello,

In a previous post cdifan said that he would probably release a cd-i file player and that the necessary stuff for this is contained in the emulator.

http://www.cdinteractive.co.uk/forum/vi ... =9881#9881

I was wondering if you know something about a technical set of documentation / reference describing the cd-i media formats (particularly pictures) ?

I am currently trying to convert some pictures located in the RTF files. I already found a way to interpret CD-i's RLE and Clut. But some formats remains mysterious for me, and the missing image headers doesn't help.

If you said you could produce a file player, maybe have you found a way to decode each format separately ?

Else, you imply that a such player will require a CD-i BIOS, because your emu focus on emulating hardware.

Thanks in advance for your enlightenments.
OpT_fr

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:11 pm
by cdifan
All the video formats are of course described in the Green Book, but that is not publicly available.

However, the documentation for one of the CD-i video decoder chips, the Motorola MCD212, is publicly available and regarding to image formats it's completely identical to the Green Book.

You can find it on the ICDIA site here.

And no, a CD-i File Player would NOT require a BIOS ROM; no system software is involved in basic audio or video decoding, it is all done by the hardware.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:32 am
by opt_fr_
Thank you, it is what I was looking for.

I cannot believe that CD-i has a such complicated hardware (CISC cpu, specialized hardware decoders...)

Now modern computers keep the complexity into software.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:55 pm
by cdifan
Modern computers are also a whole lot faster; given the slow cpu (specified as 8 MHz 68000 equivalent) all the complicated functions HAVE to be performed with specialized hardware or there would not be any cpu time left :-)