Loan #014

A new batch of loaned discs from world's greatest CD-i collector Blazers presents quite the grab bag of quirks.

In the Top Row - a batch of trojan horses - discs mostly bearing the CD-i logo, which are not CD-i format. Of note:

• Portfolios is a series of Audio Books which "Play on any Audio CD Player or CD-i Player". While of course Redbook Audio CDs play on CD-i players, it's unusual to see a CD-i mention on just-redbook-audio discs. It may lead someone to suspect these could be CD-i Ready - however after popping one in my computer, they are merely Redbook Audio CDs without any CD-i Ready abilities/filesystem.
• The Sable Gully bears a CD-i logo and also mentions PC specs, however the disc is not a hybrid and does not read in a CD-i player.

In the Middle Row:

• Megamind is an interesting line of titles as it is the first identified game for the CD+G format - a quiz game. Unfortunately the disc had damage, but I will be uploading the damaged dump to the Preserve CD-i archive account for anyone who wishes to tinker with it.

• The Pleasures of Sex (can't miss the "sex" part on the art) will be added to redump.
• Making the Grade - the insanely rare BP oil office sim, now has an insanely rare beta coming to redump!
• Legendary composer Ennio Morricone's CD-i Ready is now properly preserved as well.
• How to Photograph Nature - the final Photo CD in the USA 310690* series to be dumped is now dumped. The root CDI folder is fully loaded, so expect a beyond-just-PCD experience.

The Bottom Row is the "money shot" so to speak, la crème de la pie of the post:

"Atlantis 4" is an early tech demo which makes use of Doom elements, see Blazer's video here to check it! You'll find this in the redump archive.org set as "Atlantis - The Last Resort (Europe) (Beta 1)".

Wat! Doom on CD-i!?! ...kinda

The Ugly Duckling is an unreleased/prototype edutainment title in English, Spanish, and Japanese! While we couldn't get a perfect dump out of this title, a working dump has been made! Expect to see this in the Non-Redump CD-i set once a best-effort recovery has been made.

In the Invisible Bonus Row we have... Golgo 13! A review of which can be read here. The rom can now be found in the redump archive.org set!

Unrelated to the game, but Sonny Chiba is always worth shoe-horning in.

Thanks again to Blazers for sharing these sweet CD-i treats from his personal collection!

Another Cache of Rare CD-i Photos

 A while back, Steep Haywire did us a great service by dumping a handful of his rare discs. Additionally he provided a large batch of photos of his collection which serve as excellent documentation.

The below collection of discs is largely undumped.

And a few from elsewhere on the internet (Hidden Palace I believe all):

Thanks to Steep Haywire for sharing these photos of his collection. They are likely the final batch of pics documenting his amazing collection we are to see.

AudioVision CD format

At some point not too-too long ago comparatively to the history of the universe, I stumbled upon an ambiguously titled CD format "AudioVision CD" ("AVCD"). If you were to guess that AudioVision CD format was just branding for "Enhanced CD", "CD Plus", yadda yadda then you'd be wrong.

 

The logo which appears on AudioVision CD format releases.

AudioVision CD (AVCD) format, much like CD-i Ready stores data in the Track 01 pregap (IsoBuster will display this as "Track 00"). Also like CD-i Ready, as a result of the data portion of Track 01 being glued to the Redbook Audio portion of Track 01, the data portion is scrambled upon dumping (as Redbook Audio shouldn't be descrambled). This quirk makes both types of discs annoying to deal with as dumped data.

One potential solution would be to split Track 01 at the Pregap, descramble the first part of the track (the data), and push the rest of the track (the Redbook Audio portion) to Track 02, then make Track 02 into Track 03, and so on so there would be one extra Track declared in the cue (with an extra .bin to match).

It's probably no surprise to hear that Philips developed the AudioVision CD format. A press release announces two early releases of the format ("worm" by 2 Minutes Hate and a self-titled release by Techno Squid Eats Parliament - both released in 1994).

This is an unnecessarily large png file.

Two record labels which seemed to champion the format (releasing multiple titles employing the technology) are Ardent Records and Christian label Forefront. Forefront liked the format so much that they erroneously included the AudioVision CD logo up until at least the 1998 release of Big Tent Revival's "Amplifier" album, which was actually an Enhanced Music CD (Blue book / multisession).

Discogs.com recognizes the format, and you can see all the discs which are currently logged as AVCD with their format filter. However, proceed with caution as "AVCD" seems to be a buzzword in Asia that refers to music CDs which come packed with VCDs as "AVCD" editions - and most of the discogs entries for AVCD are not AVCD format at all. Look for the "AudioVision CD" logo on the artwork, and the titles should be released in the mid 1990s.