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Posted: **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...

Posted: **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.

Posted: **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

CDinteractive.co.uk - Home of the CD-i Forum

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

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