A bit about CD-i Films released in USA (with Bonus Mystery!)

My journey into the CD-i-verse began less than a year ago when I decided to clean up redump.org's miss lists and stumbled across the mess of information that was copy-pasted into the wiki ages ago. Among the many categories - games - demos - multimedia - etc - was 'movies'. While Europe's CD-i catalog is much murkier to define what VCD's fall under the 'CD-i branded' category (for two reasons #1 CD-i branded labeling is less pronounced on Euro VCD releases #2 catalog numbering is more generic) - USA's much cleaner / clearer and has an end in sight (largely due to the USA market not needing countless translations). Now- for this article I'm focusing strictly on the USA market.

Stating the obvious- the CD-i branded movie category broadly breaks down into two categories:

  1. CD-i Digital Video format. These discs play in CD-i players with Digital Video cards, but do NOT play in regular VCD players.
  2. Video CD format. These discs play both in regular VCD players as well as CD-i players equipped with a Digital Video card. Confusingly, these discs often - if not always - include a "Compact Disc Digital Video" logo, in addition to a "Video CD" mention. 
The serial numbers for both types of releases start with a USA-CDi-distinct "310" serial number.


CD-i Digital Video format release.
Note - "DigitalVideo" in the lower right hand corner of this cover.


Video CD format release.
Note - "Video CD" in the lower right hand corner.



A treasure trove surfaces:


Donations largely drive preservation. If you think I'm donating my life savings (in addition to all the time I spend) preserving CD-i discs - you crazy yo. I certainly don't love you THAT much. This is the reason we rely on others helping out - often in the form of donations. VintageVic will be shipping off the above stack of CD-i branded movies to atrac17 for preservation (redump datting and archive.org mirroring) - knocking off the majority of USA movies from the Redump miss list. Pretty fuckin' fantastic if you ask me! Thanks to VintageVic for not letting these go to waste or rot undumped one of many video game museums.

Less spectacular, but hey I'll share too- recently I snagged a handful of mostly-rarer titles which I've dumped and scanned a couple for Preserve CD-i's archive.org page.


I managed to snag a few movies a couple weeks back as well when I spotted a handful of rarer titles (as well as a couple common ones I wanted to dump).


Bonus Mystery! UPDATE: NOW ALL SOLVED!!
Well, what the hell? What's wrong with a little click bait now and then. But genuinely, this is one of the bigger mysteries I'm searching for an answer to-

There are a handful of USA CD-i branded movies I can't find out whether or not they were CD-i Digital Video or VCD. Do you own any of these? If so can you share a cover pic?
  • Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Which and the Wardrobe (update: VCD)
  • Metropolis (update: VCD, probably not CD-i branded?)
  • Navigator, The (update: appears to be a PAL VCD, not CD-i branded)
  • Red Heat (update: VCD)
  • Incident at Roswell (update: PAL VCD, not Philips branded)

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