#: 18448 S12/OS9/68000 (OSK)
    26-Jul-93  11:49:02
Sb: #18439-#Phillips CD-I
Fm: Ken Jordan 72420,1302
To: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203 (X)

The Philips CD-I 910 Player has been available since Oct '91.  The price has
been lowered to about $399 on the street.  It is available from Sears as well
as other Electronics stores.  There are over 100 titles available (games,
educational, informational etc.).  The Philips CD-I players will play CD-DA
(regular audio CD's) CD+G (simple graphic audio CD's) and Kodak Photo CDs as
well as the CD-I titles.
The player is controller with an infrared joystick controller (or optional
trackball etc.)

Internally the box has:
* 68070 at 15 Mhz,
* 1MB RAM (divided into two 512K video planes)
* Video chip which provides two planes of overlayed graphics is several modes
(128 or 256 colors out of 16M, 32768 true color and DYUV photo realistic mode.)
*  8KB non-volitile RAM (for highs scores saves etc.)
*  OS-9 68K in ROM with CD-RTOS extensions (CD-Real Time Operating System)
*  An expansion slot (for which Philips is releaseing a Digital Video card this
October (~$250) which will provide 1.5MB additional RAM and a MPEG-1
audio/video decoder - This will provide better than VHS quality video with CD
quality soundtrack to be played from the CD! - (I have a development board at
work and it is really impressive, great quality from a 170Kps CD achieving over
150:1 compression).  BTW the new CD White Book ('karakoke') standard is
compatible with CD-I Digital Video so many video and movies will be available
(Paramount has already committed to 50 titles!)

A am a software engineer for Philips Interactive Media (POV) which is the
Philips company who develops and distributes software for CD-I.

A far as using a consumer CD-I player for a OS-9 computer, I don't think you
would like it.  The only I/O is one serial port that could be hooked to a
terminal and you would need all OS-9 programs/utilities (such as a shell) you
wished to run burned on a disc (unless you wanted to make your own hardware).

Philips has a development version of the player which is more realistic with
5MB RAM a SCSI port a 1.44 floppy and a Ethernet port.  But this costs (I
think) >$3000.

About OS-9, I am sorry to report that it dosen't make a very good real-time
operating system (in fact I don't belive it has the needed features to merit
the name Real Time Operating System). - Don't get me wrong OS-9 works fine, I
just wasn't designed to handle truly real time tasks.

                                                                         Ken
Jordan
                                                                         Senior
Software Eng.
                                                                         PIMA/P
V Entertainment Group
                                                                         INTERN
T: kenjordan@bix.com

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