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 Post subject: Re: Anyone want a MovieCD?
PostPosted: 04 Oct 2020, 18:32 
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signofzeta wrote:
It kind of makes you wonder what the point was of inventing a new format that is worse than VCD years after VCD when you could just use...VCD. VCD is actually pretty light on CPU usage too, comparatively speaking.

I know it's difficult to comprehend this today, but you needed a MPEG decoder capable graphics card to play VCDs on a computer, and back then the crappy basic onboard GPU of a motherboard couldn't do that. The novelty of the MovieCD format was that hardware restriction didn't exist! And there was another PC Video CD-ROM format, which I'm not going to go to deeply into can still be played today that didn't really have a name as the videos on those discs were encoded for playback using Apple's Quicktime format. You can find a complete list of all the anime video MovieCDs & CD-ROMs released in North America on my website, specifically this file.:
http://www.tweeg.psoarchive.com/collect/anime_cd-rom_checklist.pdf

There was also a sort of loosely agreed on industry embargo against bringing VCD to North America, and most of the English speaking world, out of correct fear it would overthrow the incredibly lucrative VHS market. To my knowledge, which please understand I was in only my early teens at the time, Philips was the only company that dared to publish and market VCDs for the North American (USA & Canadian) markets, and did so under the guise of them being movies for their CD-i multi-media game system platform. Understand that there were two video disc formats supported by the CD-i consoles:
  • First was a proprietary format that any CD-i system could play for which the videos were simply marked "Digital Video" in the lower right corner of the front cover.
  • Second was Video CD, but most models of the CD-i system required the purchase of a optional MPEG decoder board add-on which to play VCDs which, to my knowledge, could only be obtained via mail-order in order. The Philips published VCDs were marketed alongside the proprietary format and are differentiated by being marked as "Video CD" in the lower right corner of the front cover.
Collectively videos of both formats were plainly marked as being for the "CD-i" platform. See example scans below of packaging for both CD-i video formats.

CD-i "Digital Video" Format Release (playable on any CD-i system):
Image

Video CD Release (playable only on a CD-i system equipped with optional MPEG Decoder board):
Image
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