Was there a movie format exclusively for the CD-i?

Anything relating to CD-i can be discussed in this forum. From the multiple hardware iterations of the system to the sofware including games, reference, music and Video CDs. Maybe you hold an interest in Philips Media and the many development houses set up to cater for CD-i if so then this is the forum.
Post Reply
SirGraham
Burn:Cycle Activated
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2005 12:59 pm

Was there a movie format exclusively for the CD-i?

Post by SirGraham » Wed Sep 14, 2005 7:50 pm

I got Hunt for the Red October from a friend, and it has the CD-i logo on it. At first I though it was a VCD, but it didn't work in any DVD player nor did it work in a computer drive. So was there a seperate format of VCD for CD-i machines? I thought the CD-i were game consoles...

User avatar
cdifan
CD-i Emulator Author
Posts: 923
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:19 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Post by cdifan » Wed Sep 14, 2005 8:42 pm

From the CD-i FAQ 2000 Edition, on ICDIA:
CD-i is short for Compact Disc Interactive. It is an interactive multimedia system combining moving and still video, audio and program content on a compact disc, which can be played back in a dedicated CD-i player. A CD-i player is a stand-alone device, consiting of a CPU, memory and an integrated operating system. It operates on its own and it can be connected to a standard TV-set for displaying pictures and sound, and optionally to a stereo-system. All system interactivity is generated by positioning a cursor using an X/Y pointing device (such as a remote control with a pointing device or a mouse), and clicking options using one of the two provided action buttons.
CD-i systems most certainly are not game consoles, although they can (with sufficient trickery from the game developer) be used as such.

The CD-i discs you're referring to were called "CD-i Digital Video" or something; they are real CD-i applications that predate the VCD standard and you cannot play them on the dumbed-down stuff that calls itself a VCD player :-) However, it should be possible to extract the MPEG files and play them, but you'll probably lose the subtitles as these were often in a separate "subtitle" stream, switchable by language, much like DVD. Pure VCD does not support this feature.

InTheSand
Burn:Cycle Activated
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:30 am
Location: Nelson, New Zealand

Post by InTheSand » Thu Sep 15, 2005 3:08 am

Hi,

Have a quick Google for "ISOBuster" as this'll let you extract the MPEG-1 stream into a file on a Windows-based PC.

Note that the "Digital Video On CD-i" movies contain an MPEG stream that's in a different resolution to a standard VCD, so it isn't usually possible to create a VCD from this without re-encoding, unless you've got a VCD creation application and a DVD/VCD player that don't adhere to the standards.

- Ali

Post Reply