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From: samson@prl.philips.co.uk (Mark Samson)
Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom
Subject: Re: Reelmagic & CD-i
Message-ID: <2469@prlhp1.prl.philips.co.uk>
Date: 10 May 94 19:43:03 GMT
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Don Thomson (ei573@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) wrote:

:Please let me know if I can play a CD-i game on my Reelmagic system.  I
:can watch a Cd-i movie OK (Phillips) but can not get my CD-ROM drive to
:read or acknowledge a recently purchased Phillips CD-i game.  Thanks.
: Don Thomson
: dont@crl.com

Sigma Designs have managed to use a Sony Drive with their PC ReelMagic MPEG
decoder boards to play the MPEG from CD-i Digital Video and it is also
compatible with Video CD (the "White Book" cross-platform format jointly
specified by Philips and JVC in which Philips will release movies
in future).  You can only play the MPEG from the CD-i Digital Video
movies, nothing interactive like CD-i Digital Video games etc. 
Nowadays I see adverts referring to the ReelMagic board as "CD-i Linear
compatible" - by which they mean that it can play the linear MPEG movie
data.

From Lex van Sonderen's cdifaq.txt file:

7.  I HAVE A COMPUTER WITH A CD-ROM/XA DRIVE. CAN I PLAY CD-I DISCS ON IT?
Some manufacturers claim their CD-ROM/XA drives are 'CD-i compatible.' They
probably mean that the drives can read CD-i compatible data. That does not
mean that a computer attached to their CD-ROM/XA drive can run CD-i programs.

The CD-i standard includes specifications for audio, video and computer
hardware. In contrast to a CD-ROM drive, a CD-i player contains a complete
computer system that runs its own operating system. For a system to be CD-i
compatible, it needs to have a Motorola 68000 family central processing unit,
special audio and video hardware, and a special operating system called
CD-RTOS. A CD-ROM/XA drive connected to a PC or a Macintosh does not meet the
CD-i specification and, thus, cannot play CD-i discs.

If you have access to anonymous ftp you can get some CD-i info files from
ftp.cdrom.com /pub/cdrom/cdi or from ftp.crs4.it /mpeg/cdi. These files
actually originate in the CD-i Section (Section 17) of the Compuserve
Multimedia Forum where Philips Interative Media America support CD-i
developers.

Mark

PS. Although I work for Philips, I don't work on CD-i or multimedia.

******************************************************************************
Mark Samson: Information Technology Group, Philips Research Laboratories,
Redhill, Surrey RH1 5HA, UK    Tel(my Ext): +44 (0)293 815387
Tel(labs): +44 (0)293 815000   Fax: +44 (0)293 815500  Telex: 877261
Email:- UNIX: samson@prl.philips.co.uk  Compuserve: 70374,2143
******************************************************************************