Anyone want a MovieCD?

[tweeg]

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):


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

[elahrairrah]

Figured I'd add this here. Wife and I just moved and I found this in a box full of Audio CDs.

I think I bought this at Anime Expo 97. I had the VCD/PhotoCD card for my Sega Saturn and was picking up a lot of VCDs since they were (at least in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia) inexpensive to get. Was asking all the vendors in the dealers room if they had any anime on VCD and one came up with this "MPEG CD-ROM." So I bought it hoping it would play in my Saturn, but of course it wouldn't since it isn't actually a VCD despite the MPEG-1 encoding (which made me notice the VCD logo from then on out when searching for them.)

Took it to a friend's house whose PC at the time could decode MPEG-1 as well as play VCDs and . . . it's a pain in the butt to watch.

It pulls up a full screen of a cartoony looking PC and monitor and the programming is shown inside of that cartoon PC monitor! So you can't even get full screen video from this! And it was choppy. I think it got about 20fps at best.

In a way, I find this format to be even worse than the MovieCD since it requires MPEG-1 decoding capabilities, but can't even give you MPEG-1 quality!!!

I guess CPM/US Manga Corps didn't want to pay for VCD licensing (if there is such a thing.)