Specifications

CD-i FAQ 2000 Edition Revised February 21, 2001

Latest version and more CD-i info: http://www.icdia.org

9. CD-i on other platforms

9.1 Can I run an interactive CD-i title on my PC?

No. Unlike other CD-formats like CD-Audio and Video-CD, not only the way of encoding the

audiovisual material on the disc has been described in the standard, but also the entire playback

environment. This includes the operating system, the CPU, the audio and video decoding chips,

etcetera. You should think of CD-i as a completely designed computer system instead of just a

disc format. You will encounter the same difficulties when you try to run Macintosh software on a

Windows PC.

You can however access the contents of a CD-i disc on a PC. Refer to: 9.4 Can I view the

contents of a CD-i disc on my PC? for more information.

9.2 Can CD-i be emulated on other platforms like a PC?

It is very difficult to emulate a CD-i player 100% according to the standard on another platform.

This is mainly due to CD-i's complex video features, which are all performed in hardware on a

real CD-i player. For example a simple hardware fade between two images is not possible with a

VGA display adapter. The CPU of a CD-i player (an 68000 at 15 MHz) can of course be emulated

on today's modern PCs running at up to several hundreds of megahertzes, but this does not

make up for the whole CD-i player. To let people still use CD-i applications on their PC, a PC/CD-

i board was developed, refer to: 9.3 What was the PC/CD-i card used for? for more information.

Of course you can use CD-i Bridge discs on a PC (like Video-CDs or Photo-CDs), but then you

still need a seperate PC application to access the data on the disc. A PC shall never use the CD-i

application on such discs to run its contents.

Some people and web sites on the Internet claim to be working on a CD-i emulator for some time,

but no actual product nor a beta sample has been showed to date. I seriously doubt wether this

could really be done, but I would mean an enormous leap for the CD-i system if an emulator

would exist for PCs. If you are working on this and you need some information, do not hesitate to

contact me.

9.3 What was the PC/CD-i card used for?

A CD-i interface board for both Macintosh and PCs existed, which allowed for full CD-i

functionality on a computer system. The card was manufactured by International Interactive

Media (I2M) from Israel, and sold by Philips and I2M itself. It contained all of the components that

are also available on a dedicated CD-i player, and it did not use any component of the PC itself

(like RAM, mouse, etc.). It did not integrate att all with the normal operating system running on

the PC. A special version was made that allowed for the shared usage of a harddrive by the CD-i

system and the computer, so this one was ideal for CD-i developers. They could for example

create assets (audio and video) using their PC tools, and then integrate it into a CD-i application

using for example MediaMogul in the CD-i mode.

The PC/CD-i board was very rear, only a very small quantity of these boards were manufactured.

It was more expensive than a stand-alone CD-i player.

9.4 Can I view the contents of a CD-i disc on my PC?

A CD-i disc is based on a different filesystem than the ones used for PC systems. Where in

personal computing the ISO-9660 format and its Joliet-variant are the most well known and

widely used systems, CD-i discs use the filesystem format that is based on CD-i's operating

systems OS-9. The OS-9 filesystem allows for filenames up to 28 characters in lenght, for the