Category Archives: Contribution

Our good friend Retroman called me last day and showed me something that made a tilt in my mind…
Look at those two What’s That Bird? copies and discs. Both have the same catalogue number 8100016.
The one on the left just says “What’s that bird?” and the other on the right says “What’s that bird? – Britain and Europe”.
When we look at the discs, the one from the left says “What’s that bird? Europa” and the one from the right keep saying the same as the cover.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the disc from the left one…
We have an European catalogue number (8100016), an English title (What’s that bird?), a Dutch/German/Spanish (?) name (Europa) and all the copyrights texts are in French. What a confusion…

Retroman did put the disc on his CD-i player and both titles are exactly the same, 5 languages selection (French English, German, Italian and Spanish). So what happened with other titles out there, happened also here. The same version has been used for different countries.
The confusion here is about “Europa”. In 1992, Philips Media affiliates in Europe was emerging, the way how catalogue numbers should be given might still not be clear at that time, and being a multi-language one, “Europa” might be to embrace more than one country.

This discussion came a few days before MrMii6 and Seventy7 tagged me in the Discord server about Link™ – The Faces of Evil cover variant, using the English title for the Dutch version (with Dutch catalogue number).

I have another title for you that is Dutch that uses the European catalogue number, Body Contour.
But in this case, both discs (this is a double disc title) and the booklet, are using the Dutch catalogue numbers.

Another example are the Video-CD’s, you can easily find this kind of format over the internet, and many of them are subtitled for other languages.
Retroman also showed me one title from of his enormous Video-CD collection, Fine Things, an English language with Dutch subtitles.
This movie is using an European catalogue number (810****) instead of a Dutch one (814****).

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 😉