<story><title>The History of the Philips CD-I, Failed PlayStation Ancestor</title><url>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-history-of-the-philips-cdi-failed-playstation-ancestor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsenftner</author><text>I was one of the lead developers at Philips Interactive Media. To be fair, where the article focuses on video games, the CD-I player was never intended to be a game machine. At the time, Philips was betting that encyclopedias, educational and subscription publications would be on discs. They were betting that the network speed and general public adoption of the Internet was going to be slower, with a disc based interactive media period. They underestimated the advance of network speeds as well as the public&amp;#x27;s willingness to wait for the network. A lot of the CD-I development was centered around the consumer &amp;#x2F; end-user never having to wait, which was accomplished through a special real time media file format that effectively turned the disc into a single 740 MB file.&lt;p&gt;It was not until the reality of CD-I players being sold that the necessity for games and the zero interest in educational media became clear. At the time, digital media itself was new, and the idea of a dedicated digital disc based encyclopedia &amp;#x2F; magazine made sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rconti</author><text>This takes me back, and points out something people today probably don&amp;#x27;t fully appreciate.&lt;p&gt;In 1993, Edutainment &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; the promise of computers. We had an old XT that my sister took to college that fall, and we were shopping for a 486. Encarta and National Geographic CD-ROM based titles were everywhere. Every demo in every computer store let you play with these seemingly-limitless repositories of information. It was mind-blowing -- complete with short postage stamp videos for select subjects!&lt;p&gt;It would be fascinating to look back at all of the titles available, but rich multimedia was finally here, and it died as quickly as it had arrived, as people moved to AOL, CompuServe, and the Internet instead.</text></comment>
<story><title>The History of the Philips CD-I, Failed PlayStation Ancestor</title><url>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-history-of-the-philips-cdi-failed-playstation-ancestor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsenftner</author><text>I was one of the lead developers at Philips Interactive Media. To be fair, where the article focuses on video games, the CD-I player was never intended to be a game machine. At the time, Philips was betting that encyclopedias, educational and subscription publications would be on discs. They were betting that the network speed and general public adoption of the Internet was going to be slower, with a disc based interactive media period. They underestimated the advance of network speeds as well as the public&amp;#x27;s willingness to wait for the network. A lot of the CD-I development was centered around the consumer &amp;#x2F; end-user never having to wait, which was accomplished through a special real time media file format that effectively turned the disc into a single 740 MB file.&lt;p&gt;It was not until the reality of CD-I players being sold that the necessity for games and the zero interest in educational media became clear. At the time, digital media itself was new, and the idea of a dedicated digital disc based encyclopedia &amp;#x2F; magazine made sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BonesJustice</author><text>My dad was a marketing exec at Philips back in the ‘90s, so I had a couple of CD-I units at home, and a ton of games.  I even had an infrared gun controller and a really, really low-quality VR headset driven by dark little CRTs (I think?).  Most of my discs had simple white labels, and I’m pretty sure many of them were never actually released.  I wish I still had them.&lt;p&gt;At the time, my dad had told me the CD-I’s primary market was commercial, e.g., interactive training, demo kiosks, media stations in libraries, etc.  I don’t know whether that was the original vision or a pivot based on lousy sales.  It was probably a smart move, though, considering the only other person I knew with a CD-I at home was the daughter of the VP overseeing that division.&lt;p&gt;I used to have a CD-I infomercial on VHS featuring a giant, talking screen called “The Wall”. I wonder if I can track that down on the interwebs.&lt;p&gt;Fun aside: a CD-I video disc of &lt;i&gt;Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan&lt;/i&gt; was my first exposure to Trek.  Other fond memories include &lt;i&gt;The Wacky World of Miniature Golf&lt;/i&gt; (sooo much fun), &lt;i&gt;Escape from Cyber City&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;Mad Dog McCree&lt;/i&gt;, and &lt;i&gt;Laser Lords&lt;/i&gt; (never did make much progress in that game).</text></comment>