omegalfa – The world of CD-i

REVIEW – Iberoamerica (4 titles)

I really enjoy writing reviews, but when we are talking about different kind of titles, especially Multimedia ones, the need to share my experience with all of you is even bigger.

It took me two complete weeks to write it as we are talking about 4 titles. Tons of screenshots and image edition has been released to give you the best overview as possible of this very rare complete set of 4 titles.
I want you to feel just like you was playing the title yourself.

I was going crazy (literally) with those 4 titles… tons of screenshots and editing… witch one is from which title… I don’t think I will review again 4 titles at the same time!

About them, many of you already know the existence of Iberoamerica – 500 Años Despues (500 Years After), this is a set of 4 titles sold separately:
Iberoamerica – Descubra un Continente
Iberoamerica – Descubra su Historia
Iberoamerica – Huellas del Futuro
Iberoamerica – Arte y Cultura Iberoamericana

This is a Spanish titles set produced by Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario and published by Philips Media Iberica in 1992.

Read it right here!

CD-i 205 Japanese player and more…

It only could be him… Blazers…
Once again he came to our forum and rubbed it in our face his new entry into his personal collection.
A lot from Japan that includes a wallet with a CD-i player used to be rented (just like the ones in Europe) and many Japanese titles.

Looking at this lot, a particular title jumped into our eyes (and Blazers eyes), we are talking about Horoscope, from 1994. We still have to test it to define if it needs the DVC or not.

Besides this particular title, let’s take a look at the CD-i player, we are talking about a Japanese 205/11 model, using 100V power suply (normal to Japan). The CD-i 205 was the 1st model launched in Europe in 1992 so this model variant is from 1992 or 1993, made in Belgium and sold in Japan by Marantz (Philips bought Marantz in the 80’s).

We can see a difference in the DVC, usually you would read “Digital Video Cartridge for CD-i players”, but on this one you can read:
“This apparatus has been assembled with piece parts from the trial-run and thus not intended for measurement as it don’t meet the requirements of the specifications“.
Knowing that, we can define this specific player was not meant to be sold to public, or at least, the DVC came from the Philips testing department.
Now, Blazers needs to try the 205/11 with this specific DVC and verify if all titles that do need the Cartridge will work perfectly (I do believe so).

If in the USA the CD-i was in the beginning known as “The Imagination Machine”, then in the Japanese market, it was known as “The Super Home Media”.

Thank you Blazers 😉

Review – Arte Rupestre do Vale do Côa

We have in our possession since many years an absolute rarity title called Arte Rupestre no Vale do Côa.
This is a Portuguese commissioned and published by IPPAR (Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico e Arqueológico) in 1995, a governmental institute and CITI (Centro de Investigação para Tecnologias Interactivas) was the selected company to make it to show in an interactive way Rock Art found in the Foz Côa Valley that you can discover here: Foz Coa Valley UNESCO World Heritage.

Read the article here.

Review – Exit 7 – The Harley-Davidson Experience

We tested this unique in its kind CD-i title called Exit 7.
This is an Harley-Davidson showcase full of videos… but not only…
Produced in 1993 by Master Communications, a Dutch company, all the videos have been shot in The Netherlands.

Let’s start from beginning, we are talking about a Digital Video Cartridge (DVC) optional title, that means if you play it on a CD-i player with and then without a DVC, you will see differences. Follow me to discover which ones.

Read the review!

Credits and Watermarks

At The World of CD-i, we don’t post news very often, we are more dedicated to complete the database of all CD-i titles ever published.
But when we talk about something, we try to dig at the maximum, even if, when it comes on-line, the information is already known from other places.

To give an example, when we write a review about a title (known or unknown), we try it in all ways possible. We play it with and without a Digital Video Cartridge, with and without a 2 player splitter, in different CD-i player models, we also test the CD-i emulator compatibility, we try to find bugs and we check the memory space used in the NVRAM… and it takes time…
We also take, edit and rework numerous screenshots, scans and now also making our own videos.

You will always see the name of the title’s owner or contributor in our database. If no name is shown, then it is because the title is owned by one of us (team).

Write an articles takes time to confirm facts, to ask permissions to include pictures and documents. Same thing for hardware repairs and development. We don’t just quote other people who have done this work and just add some personal opinions (this is the easy way).

Of course, we publish on this site and so, on the internet. But being on internet do not means it do not have an owner.
The CD-i needs to be shared, but when shared or just quoted, it has to be credited, and not copied then published with previous dates to avoid any credits ( we saw it many times unfortunately).

Talking about quotes, it is important to remember when you quote someone from different parts of a discussion, it can be stay out of context and this is a form of how a fake news can born.

I asked personally to some people to do not quote me (omegalfa) as I am not in search of any kind of fame or glory, and also don’t want to be related with some websites/blogs, but unfortunately, it has not been respected.
We have also seen very often our real names being shown. We use usernames for a reason… please respect that.

That is why, even if known from everyone, we now publicly ask to anyone who copy/paste our text and/or use our pictures, to always add a direct link to www.theworldofcdi.com and to not credit it to a specific person but to The World of CD-i.

All the pictures that are watermarked, must be used as it is, with the watermarks, for the reasons described before.
We do not tolerate any watermark removal or hiding.

IF YOU DISLIKE THE WATERMARKS, JUST DON’T USE THE PICTURES.

And talking about watermarks, we have to be clear about this point:
When we re-opened The World of CD-i website, we was watermark free, but after seeing many times our pictures shared without credits, we decided to add this feature.

Many people also choose us to share pictures of titles, collections and information on our Forum, Facebook Support Group or Twitter, but once again, the credits goes to the person who shared it and do not include the place where it as been shared.

To conclude, at The World of CD-i, we are 7 people, you can know who they are on the contacts page, and even if I use to be the front-man, we work as a TEAM. Each one of us have a specific work here.
When I decided to relaunch the site, I asked to each one of them to join me in this journey. I can’t and will not tolerate a disrespect of there work, which includes many late long nights working on the information you can now read on this site.

Thank you.