Do some DVD player read CD-i ?

[djidjo]

I'd like to know if it's possible to read cd-i with some standalone DVD players. Thanks !
Djidjo

[Joe Fenton]

If it's not in the list of supported formats, it probably doesn't. You could also check the web site for who makes the stand-alone to see if there is a firmware update that adds support for it.

I wouldn't hold out any hope on it. CD-I is an old MPEG1 format promoted by Philips. Not many things play it. Heck, even COMPUTERS don't really support it. You can get a CD-I filesystem VxD for Windows 9X that's rather buggy, or you can rip the files using ISO Buster. Your best bet is to rip the files with ISO Buster and just play the MPEG1 stream directly.

[djidjo]

Well, I already did what you say : I checked dvdrhelp for CD-I compatibility and the Kiss DP450 sites and firmware updates. CD-I is not mentionned, but I was hoping... :rolleyes:
Thanks for your suggestion, but I'm not interested in ripping CD-Is, I just want to play CD-I games, and I'll lose the interactivity if I just rip the video.
Any other suggestion ?
Djidjo

[oddball]

CD-i was a dropped format so long ago now that finding anything that plays them is a longshot. Best search Ebay for an old player perhaps. Wasn't CD-i a Philips format?

[oddball]

Googled this site http://www.icdia.org/faq/

Unfortunately the link to the list of players is not working anymore

[oddball]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3089414783&category=50227

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by djidjo
Well, I already did what you say : I checked dvdrhelp for CD-I compatibility and the Kiss DP450 sites and firmware updates. CD-I is not mentionned, but I was hoping... :rolleyes:
Thanks for your suggestion, but I'm not interested in ripping CD-Is, I just want to play CD-I games, and I'll lose the interactivity if I just rip the video.
Any other suggestion ?
Djidjo

CD-I games require a real CD-I player or an emulator. The only one I know of is CD-ice.

http://www.zophar.net/Files/CD-ice.zip

It only plays one game - Rise of the Robots, so if that's not the game, you're stuck looking for a real CD-i on eBay or something like some of the previous replies above state.

[oddball]

I tried reading some CD-i dics in several ROM drives once. But it would not see anything. :)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Joe Fenton
CD-I games require a real CD-I player or an emulator. This is true. I bought into the format when it first came out and I still have a few CD-i discs.

As you mentioned before, the technology was developed by Philips. Confusingly however a great many discs labelled as CD-i (US mainly) can be spun in DVD player as they are really no more than a VideoCD.

Some of you with genuine VideoCD's may have noticed that the discs often contain chapters. You may also have noticed that when spinning the discs in a PC or DVD player that accessing the chapters does not always work!

However, if you were to put the same disc in an Philips DVD player, chapter accessing will work.... clever in-it!

Cheers

[Joe Fenton]

CD-I video discs are not quite the same as VCDs. They don't follow the same rules for program access points (chapters), directory structure, or file naming. Even the video stream isn't the same. VCDs are supposed to be 352x240 for NTSC. CD-I is 384x240.

Probably the biggest difference is the disc itself - a VCD uses (at least) two tracks. The first track is mode 2 form 1 2048 bytes per sector in standard ISO-9660; the second (and higher) track is mode 2 form 2 2324 bytes per sector. CD-I discs are one track in mode 2 form 2 with a variant of ISO-9660 specific to Philips. Windows CDFS does not support this type of disc.

I would certainly hope a Philips DVD player would handle a Philips CD-I disc. ;) Be kind of silly otherwise.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Joe Fenton
...I would certainly hope a Philips DVD player would handle a Philips CD-I disc. ;) Be kind of silly otherwise. Well there's the rub. Because they don't!

As I type this I can see an NTSC CD-i version of Dances With Wolves. The CD-i logo is all over the packaging and yes it will play perfectly (chapter points an' all) on my Philips DVD player. If I then dig out my CD-i of Sting's Greatest Hits, it's a total no go in any of my DVD players or PC's...

And I'm unable to spin good ol' Sting in my CD-i player because it went 'tits up' years ago!

Cheers

[Joe Fenton]

Is the disc clean and scratch free? As I said above, CD-I discs are ALL mode 2 form 2, which includes very little error correction. It's possible the DVD simply can't read the directory structure due to dirt or scratches. Try reading the disc on your PC using ISO Buster to see if the disc is readable at all.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Joe,

You know I have to admit I never thought to try ISO buster!

Anyway I've just loaded it and I'm reading the disc for the first time now. Which isn't bad going when you consider I bought it on the 28 Jan 1995 at a cost of £17.99!

I don't believe it!

Thanks very much for giving me the necessary kick up the ass...

Cheers and thanks again

SMD :D

[Joe Fenton]

No problem. I use ISO Buster to "watch" my Star Trek VI CD-I discs. :D
I used to use the CDI VxD FS under Millenium, but it doesn't work with 2K/XP, so you're stuck extracting the files with ISO Buster.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I have some CD Video's (as opposed to VideoCD).

I guess they could only be described as being CD sized LaserDisc's. They usually comprise of 1No audio/video LaserDisc element with 2-3No standard CD-Audio tracks.

I don't suppose there's anybody who knows how to extract and play the LaserDisc element?

Cheers

[Joe Fenton]

With a LaserDisc player. If it's a small LaserDisc, it's analog, not digital. The best way to describe it is like the signal on a video cassette tape recorded onto a CD. CDROMs will not read these type of discs at all.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Joe Fenton
With a LaserDisc player. If it's a small LaserDisc, it's analog, not digital. The best way to describe it is like the signal on a video cassette tape recorded onto a CD. CDROMs will not read these type of discs at all. Yes, I guess you could describe them as being small LaserDisc's. Luckily enough, my Pioneer PAL/NTSC LaserDisc player still works so I can play the few (all PAL) that I have.

Now you pose an interesting technical challenge. Even though the A/V section of the disc is decoded in an analogue format, the informaion is still stored on the disc in one's and zero's. So technically it should be possible for 'some kind' of software to be writtn to read the information!

And although a PC may not be able to be configured to read the disc and decode the information on it in 'real time' (like a LaserDisc player does in hardware) I would have thought it should be possible for a PC to look at the one's and zero's and make some sense of them in software... even if it took a few hours...

Just a thought... Cheers

[Joe Fenton]

The problem is those "ones and zeroes" are not ones and zeros. They form no recognizable data patterns for any kind of CD to read. CDs require the ones and zeroes to follow very specific rules allowing them to be decoded later. This is called EFM (eight-to-fourteen modulation). Think of how floppy discs used MFM.

The ones and zeroes on a LaserDisc give a modulated frequency through PWM (pulse width modulation). This modulated frequency gives the interleaved analog signals. You need something like a bitlevel CD duplicator to give a raw signal sampled at more than twice the highest PWM frequency. Then you could take the raw data and look at the squarewave over time to figure out the PWM signal and the resultant analog signal.

[rc55]

I did hear about a CD-I Emulator way back, and after some googling I found this:

http://www.zophar.net/cd-i.html

...which can sadly only play Rise Of The Robots - and it hasn't been updated for some time. I'd imagine that someone will pick this project up again - MAME the arcade machine emulator I'd imagine will come to a critical mass of hardware support - so its sister project MESS (which deals with computer emulation) may get some well deserved attention, thus possibly instigating a new CD-i emulator.

I certainly had a lot of fun playing on those odd home entertainment devices. I remember thinking the video quality was brilliant at the time (well, no analogue vhs noise made me happy - and I hadn't seen a laserdisc at that point) - and the games being well produced but crappy to play.

So - as far as the video goes - I'd imagine that you'd have possibly some luck getting cd-i formatted video cd's working on set top boxes - perhaps those that support non standards-compliant streams (like KVCD profiles), but I couldn't be certain.

Ruairi