How to view a CDi

[beatle888]

Hello everyone,
my girlfriend just purchased a CDi thinking that we would be able to view the content on our computer...however, i cant seem to find a player (application) that will handle this type of outdated format. Does anyone here know how we would be able to convert this CDi to a viewable format? Or perhaps an application that might support the CDi?

Thank you for your help.

I'm running Panther and she has Windows XP.

Thank you beatle888


happy holidays

 

[neoelectronaut]

Wow....CDi...that is INDEED an old format. I'll do a little looking around and see what I can find for you.

Edit: Okay, I did a quick search and all I found was a CDi emulator for windows that plays nothing but "Rise of the Robots"...so....I don't think you're going to have much luck.

 

[Powerbook G5]

I remember seeing those commercials for the CDi way back in the day during my early morning insomnia attacks at 4 am with the guy who was looking for the meaning of life.

 

[beatle888]

well, thanks to the two of you for the info. i'll purchase with more caution in the future. thanks again and happy holidays.

beatle

 

[Makosuke]

Don't give up quite yet; there's at least a couple other things you can try.

As I understand it, a CDi (which uses a format called "Green Book") is a proprietary Phillips format that is very similar to a VCD (called "White Book" format), but with a different file format on the disc, and slightly different video format (a bit higher resolution). There were very few CDi movies ever produced, and I haven't seen one since the mid 90s--only VCDs.

That said: If you actually have a VCD, rather than a "true" CDi disc, you can definitely play it on your computer. If you're using 10.3, just find the avseq.dat file and open that with Quicktime Player--bingo. Or, copy it to your hard drive (should be about 500MB) and play it from there. You can also process these DAT files with a program called VCDGear, into a proper MPEG file.

Note that this won't work on 10.2 or earlier--support for the VCD filesystem was broken.

If, however, you really do have a CDi, it's possible 10.3 can still read it. If so, you can process the file with VCDGear to make it into a proper MPEG file, which Quicktime Player has no problems with.

Hope that made some sense.

(Amusingly enough, CDi was originally created just to display interactive images and animation; support for full video wasn't added until a later version, and early CDi players needed a special add-on module to play video. I've always wanted to see a real CDi, just to play with.)

 

[neoelectronaut]

Our art teacher back in say....1996 had a CDi that we used to look at art-based multimedia stuff.