Philips Video Cd's Wanted/ Plus the US Master VCD List

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.
phatrat1982
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:54 pm

Post by phatrat1982 » Fri Jun 17, 2011 7:53 pm

Sorry for being so scatter brained it is finals week and you know how stressful that can be.



What I did was posted on every home theater, dvd, and video forum I could find out there and all the responses were mostly lame, everyone generally tends to think there never were any VCD movies sold in the US, but I found one guy who quoted from an article basically saying that most discs were not films but training and industrial videos used by big companies and that there was no master list out there with all the Hollywood produced discs. Considering all the time I have spend digging for this I took his word for it without really digging any further from there.


Honestly I am still not convinced that in 3 years they only released 125 films DVD and LaserDisc both had more than that in their first couple of years so to me I just don't buy that "master list" as being complete there has to be more out there. I don't see any films by Disney, Fox, or even Sony in there. You would think that they would have produced something I know Disney is very picky about their home video releases but I am pretty sure they had a few on LaserDisc.


I guess it is driving me crazy. I mean true the Chinese stuff is out there but that only makes it harder looking for US stuff. Especially from just a historical stand point I mean damn it wasn't even that long ago how can everything on the subject just be buried and forgotten. I think I am going to have to go beyond the damn web and do some real investigating if I am going to get to the bottom of this.

After all I am a journalism/film student maybe I should make this into a documentary I mean I don't know if anyone else has tackled the issue it seams VCD only ever gets a vague mention of being in between LD and DVD if it even gets that much.

kcalhoun
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Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 4:41 pm

Post by kcalhoun » Sun Jan 01, 2012 9:19 pm

phatrat1982 wrote:1. DID anyone else publish titles for VCD in the US that were not marketed as CD-i compatible but just general release like WB or somebody or were all VCD's tied into CD-i even if they were playable on other hardware?
Yes. I know of two companies other than Philips that published a set of Video CD titles in the U.S. in the mid 1990s: 1) Vision Interactive Publishing, and 2) Digital Disk Entertainment.

Of course there may have been others; those are the two that I happen to know of.
phatrat1982 wrote:2. IF answer 1 is YES does anyone have a list of titles NOT published by Philips but well everything else?
In late 1995 or early 1996, Vision Interactive Publishing offered an MPEG upgrade board for PCs bundled with Video CDs of various Orion titles as the "Orion MPEG Movie Pack". The 8 movie titles were:

Cadillac Man
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Force 10 From Navarone
FX
Navy Seals
Mermaids
Throw Momma From The Train
The Woman In Red

Digital Disk Entertainment published a library of Video CD titles that included a number of public domain films. I have a copy of "The Gold Rush" from DDE, and the insert lists dozens of titles offered by them, including "The Little Princess", "The Man With The Golden Arm", "Meet John Doe", and "The Snows Of Kilimanjaro".
phatrat1982 wrote:3. IS there any chance Star Wars was available on CD-i or VCD at any point in time?
I have never heard of a release of "Star Wars" as a Video CD title in any country that used the NTSC standard. As I'm sure you've found out by now, the special editions of the original trilogy were released on Video CD in Malaysia in 2000.
phatrat1982 wrote:Ok so I can't find answers to 1 and 2 but I did discover a WB format called Movie CD for PC CD-ROMS but that I presume is not the same.
MovieCD was very definitely distinct from Video CD, as it used a proprietary video encoding format. A decoder for PCs had to be installed before the titles could be viewed.

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