Is there a way to play Philips CD-I movies on a CDTV?

[Florida]

Is there a way to play Philips CD-I movies on a CDTV?

[Darrin]

I doubt it.  The CDTV was an A500 at heart.  Even the CD32 which was an A1200 needed the FMV module.

Some CDi movies were just MPEG files that could be renamed and played on any old MPEG compatable hardware (DVD players, PCs, etc), however many of my CDi movies couldn't.  I had to use a utility I found on the internet to allow me to rip the video stream and copy them to DVD-R disks so I could play them on my DVD player.  At least I could combine the multiple files off different CDs onto 1 DVD.

[Florida]

I see. So I guess the FMV module will not work with the CDTV. Would any BluRay Player be able to play CD-I movies?

[Darrin]

No, the FMV wouldn't.  Remember that the CDTV was delevloped before VideoCDs.

The reason why some CD-i movies work on PCs and DVD players and some don't is because the early CD-i movies releaed by Philips used a "green book standard" and didn't comply with the ISO-9660 file system.  Later disks used the "white book standard" and they can be read on any old PC.

Those "green book" ones can be read using CD/DVD drives that allow raw data to be ripped from the disks and there are free utilities to do that.  I converted mine so long ago I can't even remember what I used (I did it using an old WinXP machine) and then I wrote the files onto DVDs (Star Trek V, Crying Game, The Firm, etc).  One thing I will say is that it is a complete waste of time because on a modern TV the quality is horrible.  You're better off downloading a copy of the movie off the internet as an AVI file.

[Darrin]

For those CD-i disks you can read, just copy the video *.DAT file, rename it as *.mpg, durn it to a CD/DVD and if your DVD player allows it, you can play the files straight from there.

My video CDs of Kate Bush, Tina Turner and Queen allowed this.

[amiman99]

I see. So I guess the FMV module will not work with the CDTV. Would any BluRay Player be able to play CD-I movies?

If the player supports VCD format then yes. Usually is printed on top of the player, like: DVD,VCD, MP3, JPEG etc.

[Darrin]

Even if it plays VCDs, it most likely will no play early greenbook CDi titles.  I had a Philips DVD player that played VCDs but not early CDi titles.