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Cdi information?


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The CDi games are not region locked (or copy protected aside a couple that require CloneCD) but they are 50/60Hz coded and you can see the screen bigger/smaller depending on the combination console/game.

 

If your Scart to HDMI adapter does PAL->NTSC or NTSC->PAL (not sure which part of the world you are in) then you are OK, most of them do but not all, worth a try.

 

My CDi has no Scart port at all, neither SVideo, just plain composite (which is not half as bad on the CDi) .... the motherboard has all the traces but they left out the components, I've bought all the pieces, never found the time to solder them .... mine is a PAL CDi490 which one do you want to get?

 

Watch out that gaming controllers aren't cheap (the "remote" model ones are unbearable for gaming), the light gun ain't cheap either but it works on all TVs (the tech is like the Wii just 10+ years earlier and NOT wireless)

 

EDIT:

some info here http://www.icdia.co.uk/index.html

and here https://www.philipscdi.com/

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The CD-i that we had was a no-SCART model, but with the MPEG decoder card. Having said that, it was a PAL model being used in a PAL region; I have no idea if you'd run into problems running a machine designed for 50Hz power cycles on 60Hz. Probably not, but I'm just not qualified to comment on that one.

 

The MPEG card is no great shakes, by the way. It works fine, but video playback makes it very clear where compression losses were considered acceptable. Not advising against getting one, necessarily, but there are also other things you could spend the money on. Probably only worth it if you're trying to build out a complete CD-i collection.

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The CD-i output RGB with SCART, so your main concern would be to know if your SCARt to HDMI box does 50 to 60 htz.

 

I haven' heard of region locking on the CDi; and given that the Cd-i doesn't have a 2D tile based video processor, I don't think any video game use any video trick to display more stuff on screen,

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And you'd be wrong.

The CD-i received a fair share of junk games, but there is also a good load of decent games (which, to be honest, exists on other platforms, alright).

It wouldn't be a first choice console, but it's not as bad than a Jaguar.

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And you'd be wrong.

The CD-i received a fair share of junk games, but there is also a good load of decent games (which, to be honest, exists on other platforms, alright).

It wouldn't be a first choice console, but it's not as bad than a Jaguar.

 

Honestly, I'd pick the Jag over the CD-i, and ultimately did. This isn't to say that you shouldn't get one - believe me, I completely understand acquiring devices that weren't successful simply because they're interesting - but I'd like to share some of my perspective on the system.

 

The one that we had was on loan to us from Philips; my father was working on the video production side for some of the games. I was actually pretty excited when he said that they were sending one to us: there had been a lot of buzz around the platform, but I hadn't yet seen one in action and thought it could be a really great replacement for VHS.

 

When it arrived, there were some games packed in (the only one I remember is 7th Guest, which was still in production at that stage; the discs were hand-labelled) and three movies, the only two of which I can recall were Top Gun and The Naked Gun. Note that this was a non-retail unit, and we were required to (and eventually did) return to Philips.

 

All it really ended up doing was becoming one of the most forgettable systems I ever used. Other than what I've described in this thread, once the initial novelty value had worn off there just wasn't much there in the way of substance. It literally left next to no impression on me.

 

As something of a stepping stone from tape to DVD, it's something of a footnote, but not the kind of footnote that is likely to make you say, "hmm, interesting" after reading it.

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I have a 220, but mine is an NTSC system, so no SCART. It does output s-video, though.

 

The CDi is not terrible. It unfortunately got touted as one of the worst systems of all time (possibly due to the Zelda and Mario games), and now people seem to like to say it's not worthwhile to own one. Kind of like how E.T. got the reputation of the worst game ever, when it really doesn't even come close.

 

The CDi isn't a great system, but there are some enjoyable games like The Apprentice and Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam that you can't play elsewhere. There just happens to be a lot of shovelware and edutainment titles as well.

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The CDi is not terrible. It unfortunately got touted as one of the worst systems of all time (possibly due to the Zelda and Mario games), and now people seem to like to say it's not worthwhile to own one. Kind of like how E.T. got the reputation of the worst game ever, when it really doesn't even come close.

 

The CDi isn't a great system, but there are some enjoyable games like The Apprentice and Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam that you can't play elsewhere. There just happens to be a lot of shovelware and edutainment titles as well.

 

These are good points, and worth keeping in mind. It really isn't a bad system, just one that wasn't the greatest.

 

Then again (and this is in fairness to the CD-i), it was never meant to be in heavy competition with home computers or consoles of the time - it was really more of a consumer electronics device. Granted, the 'consumer electronics' description could also be applied to home computers or consoles, but I'm classing the CD-i more in the category of VCRs or DVD players when I say that.

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These are good points, and worth keeping in mind. It really isn't a bad system, just one that wasn't the greatest.

 

Then again (and this is in fairness to the CD-i), it was never meant to be in heavy competition with home computers or consoles of the time - it was really more of a consumer electronics device. Granted, the 'consumer electronics' description could also be applied to home computers or consoles, but I'm classing the CD-i more in the category of VCRs or DVD players when I say that.

That's true, but that was also part of the problem... it was sold as a substitute for a computer or a console, but it was neither. On the other hand, it was at least moderately competitive to VCR technology at the time, but didn't get the chance to lean on that.

 

There was definitely a round hole in the market at that time, unfortunately for Phillips, the CDi was a square peg.

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IMO, the CD-i issue was that it came too early and too late.

Too late, because such a demo of video, audio and multimedia was starting to appear on computers. And people knew that you could do more with a computer than with a closed box like that.

Too early... Well simply because the tech needed to make the concept of the CD-i wasn't there!

Video : if DVD had been there, to allow to have a full movie on one disc.

Multimedia : more power, internet cnnectivity (there was a modem, released in 1996 if I recall right)

Also, the need for it wasn't there either. at least for the public.

The CD-i sold well for museums, schools and other public spaces looking for a (compared to other solutins of the era) inexpensive interactive mmultimedia system.

Some museum used CD-i up to the late 2000's.
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I remember it being really expensive for what it could do. This says it cost $1000 at launch, which seems about right. I had a CD-ROM drive for my Macintosh which had a ton more software, in addition to being infinitely more useful, so I never gave CD-i a second look. In contrast, 3DO, Sega CD, and Jaguar had tons of fun things at somewhat more reasonable prices.

 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-history-of-the-philips-cdi-failed-playstation-ancestor

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To your original question, it seems some models are more compatible than others.

 

http://cdii.blogspot.com/2007/11/cd-i-is-not-really-palntsc-region-free.html

 

That machine is not for me, but it looks like you could have all the software in about 35GB of space. PM sent.

 

Jeez, I can't remember the last time I burned a CD-R. I used to have whole cake boxes of the things. Amazing how easy it is to burn out on something.

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I'll back up the CDi honesty trip with another positive post from a former owner in the 90s.

 

For one, it was a smear campaign that went up against it before the internet really was a thing, EGM was centered on it, and I used to know some Philips employee back in that decade who dished some horrible dirt that sent them packing eventually back to Europe where it hung on for a bit longer.

 

It was never made or intended to be made as a gaming centric system. It from the get go was designed as a multimedia device with a centering more on education and media (movies and music.) The system was packaged as such as an encyclopedia (great one for the time) and some other media, not games. It was designed to stream basic media from the disc as it spun, very little memory to dump data into it so it could only go so long before it would have to pause and spin up some more junk into RAM. Game makers in time learned to work that with split up stages (Mutant Rampage Bodyslam) or having sequences (Link Faces of Evil/Hotel Mario) or they did something you could stream like rail shooters (chaos control), dvd movie games(dragon's lair types,) or the games were just small enough of a footprint to work like Namco Museum or Lords of the Rising Sun. It had dozens of actually A down to B- tier good quality games to actually enjoy, some made it onto other formats like the PC even or consoles in select cases.

 

it just is an asinine hanger on of the 90s disinformation campaign that craps all over it, largely sheeple gamer wannabe cool kid losers who bandwagon how awful it is, some being Nintendo butthurts wanting to rag on the 4 games that arrived (of which only 1 was truly broken and awful Zelda's Adventure.) In the era it did and for years even have the best releases of some games (like the Don Bluth titles and Lord's of the Rising Sun for some examples.)

 

If I ever find one locally, and it's not scam priced I'd buy it again to experience the stuff I had and some I never could track down in the pre-internet ebay take off days too.

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Let's be realistic here.

As a console the CDi is forgettable, it has no arcade games to speak of, it has a few interesting FMVs/rails (I enjoyed Chaos Control on it for some reason I can't quite explain, which btw it requires the MPEG module).

Yes it was mostly targeted at the multimedia market but it was way too expensive once you factor in the MPEG card required for movies and some games (it competed with the likes of Commodore CDTV). It targeted a market that never existed/materialized and it was too expensive at it.

 

Of interest is that there were 2 possible CPUs in use, the SCC68070 (a modified 68000 with embedded peripherals but a removed address generation unit making almost every instruction needing access to memory take twice as much as on a 68000) and the MC68340 (an embedded 68K whose CPU is actually a derivative of a 68020). I heard that the latter caused some compatibility issues (notably the 68070 was the default) but it is unclear if due to the better core on the MC68340 same games were running smoother (not that it mattered much to be clear as the almost complete lack of arcade games made "slowdowns" a non issue), according to Philips (well NXP now) docs on the 68340 it can perform at 1.6x times a same frequency 68K.

Wrt the video capabilities it used an SCC66470 that did have some pixel processing facilities to process 4 4bits pixels at once or 2 8bits pixels at once (copy/patch/swap/exchange) but nothing particularly targeted at arcade type games.

 

After the negative and some tech-talk, I have to admit I kind of enjoy mine but it was bought as the last console of my retro-collection, and if you want a mouse, the gun and a decent gamepad it gets a little expensive imho.

 

EDIT: there was also an MC68341 that integrated the RTC thus removing once and for all the timekeeper chip (a source of problems once the "embedded" batteries run out of charge)

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Not a game system

 

This gels with my memory of how Philips pitched the CD-i very heavily as an edutainment device. The adverts seemed to always take great pains to point out the two things that the CD-i was intended for: somehow making you smarter through the miracle of CD multimedia, and the supplementary miracle of playing back movies stored on a digital disc. Games always seemed to be mentioned briefly and in passing.

 

Granted, that is how I recall it being marketed in Europe; I really don't know how it was advertised in the US or elsewhere.

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That advertising technique of "not just a toy" gets trotted out a lot. I guess it works on guilty parents or something. I wish I could remember the anti-PSP ad that showed lobotomized kids enjoying car crashes at the expense of whatever Leapster was being sold.

 

It's ALWAYS the games consoles we remember and cherish, every time.

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The ads for "Burn Cycle" conflict considerably. Seeing those, you'd swear the CDI was a breath away from being the PlayStation.

 

This isn't exactly unusual. Game companies often have conflicting messages for different markets.

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This gels with my memory of how Philips pitched the CD-i very heavily as an edutainment device. The adverts seemed to always take great pains to point out the two things that the CD-i was intended for: somehow making you smarter through the miracle of CD multimedia, and the supplementary miracle of playing back movies stored on a digital disc. Games always seemed to be mentioned briefly and in passing.

 

Granted, that is how I recall it being marketed in Europe; I really don't know how it was advertised in the US or elsewhere.

Same here, like I said I had one. it was not advertised for games. Games were advertised as an aside as they'd point out a few things you got elsewhere like Tetris, Namco arcade games, and the first couple Nintendo titles, and the multimedia games (Dragon's Lair types.) It was all about being smarter and being the cool person early into the multimedia tv box revolution. Philips as an early maker/designer of optical media wanted to sell it, so they pushed this device, much like Sony trying to ram their odd memory card format and UMD formats on the world with PSP trying to force those as standards. It was just an earlier version of the push, much like vhs vs betamax before that. The gaming media wouldn't listen to reason or have at it, so they made a point to rarely be fair towards it, and EGM had outright hatred and attacks in their magazine calling the thing basically hot garbage.

 

That philips employee I knew once basically laid out this interesting story of how EGM tried to blackmail them for positive coverage and the cost was essentially for each of their panel reviewers (which was 4 or 5 at the time) they'd get the 'console' the better controllers, mouse, DVR movie card addon, and whatever games to review in the pipe. Philips not used to such a hit like the media would do to the others which they'd concede then as it was far cheaper systems, games and parts for the likes of Nintendo, Sega, Atari etc. they basically told themselves to piss off, you get what you get and we're not sending more. EGM pulled out the daggers. Back then there were next to no other multi-system (outside of PC/computer) magazines out in the earlier 90s aside from like Gamepro and Gamefan and they didn't much cover it. EGM tried to cover it all, they knew they had an angle, and then went for the throat when baby didn't get their golden rattle. Aside from EGM being very pro-Sega then blowing them with outright lies at times, when I learned of that trick after Philips all but croaked in the US outside of a small Sears kiosk and select items (with pamphlets to order new games by calling direct) I canceled my sub shortly after reading back over the stuff lining up the story to dates.

 

CDI a multimedia system external forces tried to make into a gaming console and then condemned and damned to a messy costly death by those same types who pushed a label that they never wanted in the first place.

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