CD32 Mpeg card

[Darrin]

alexh wrote:
The reason you get such a fluctuation in prices for this item is *it's crap*.

True.  I had one when the CD32 was first released but after a few months the picture would start to jump after 30 minutes (probably due to heat).  I sent it to Commodore for repair via a dealer and never saw it again (thakfully I did get the money back).

Almost nothing used it. All DVD players now play VCD discs. It really isnt an item that enhances the Amiga experience at all.

Ah, but DVD players (and PCs) will not play CDi disks and most of the VCDs I bought for my CD32 were actually CDi format.  A few months ago I would have bit on such an item, but I managed to find some software that allowed me to rip the video files off my (until then) unreadable CDi disks, rename them and then burn them to a single DVD+R which would play on my DVD player.

[Darrin]

Yes they do. My TopGun plays ok, StarTrek etc. Perhaps not the ultra-cheap-o DVD players?

Noooo they don't and if you do a search then you'll find a lot of people state the same thing.  I've owned 8 different DVD players and recorders over the years and none of them would touch a CDi disk and yet would happily access a Video CD (And that includes a recent Philips model too which plays everything else including AVI and WMV).

So, my Star Trek VI, Top Gun, Waynes World, etc wouldn't work while my Queen, Kate Bush, Tina Turner, Mr Bean and Have I Got News For You would.

and most of the VCDs I bought for my CD32 were actually CDi format.

No such thing. Or at least "CDi format" is not the correct terminology for it.[/quote]

The CDi disks are what is known as "white paper" format (IIRC) and this was an earlier draft of the Video CD standard ("green" I think).

Edit:  I checked and I got it the wrong way around:

"CD-i is an older format ("Green Book") than Video CD ("White Book"). It supports interactive computer games as well as movies.
You can play VCDs on a CD-i player, provided that it has the DV cartridge. But there's about 30 movies released by Philips on CD-i which you can only play on a CD-i player, because they use the "Green Book" standard: you can't play them on a VCD player or on a PC. These CDs are labelled "Digital Video" or "DV".

Matthew Sparby (matthew AT sparby.nu) sent the following information by e-mail:

CDi Videos (Green Book Video) is an older standard than VideoCD. It uses the same MPEG-1 encoding but it uses a different filesystem. The only dedicated hardware that can play these discs is a Philips/Magnavox CDi system with a Digital Video cartridge."

Obviously these are the disks I have and the Amiga FMV was also capable of playing them too.  They may have been rereleased later in VideoCD format, but the ones I have are the original release Philips CDi disks and are marked "CDi" and not "VideoCD".

IsoBuster

That's the one.  Great program.  Now I just play them of a burned DVD and I don't even need to worry about the disk swap as the files just flow together.  ;-)