CD-i member Muh Mullet got in contact with the guys behind the Videotronic CD-i system: "Rob, who still runs Videotronic got me in Touch with Marcel, of http://www.marcelstvmuseum.com/ who also worked at Videotronic at the time. He still has a working Touch Screen unit among other things. The Touch Screen CD-i unit was fragile in the field and prone to issues with the laser transport when carried around on cunstructionsites and such, both Rob and Marcel mentioned this. It was soon replaced by a DVD version of it, the pro DVD170." Marcel:"The CD-i 472 case and the Touch monitor were built by Videotronic. The monitor part in the touch monitor was made by Orion. As far as I remember the stuff was developed in Germany, there was a third party involved, but I don't remember exactly how that was arranged, this was 20 years ago." Marcel also mentioned that the portable Philips 370 was not made by Philips either. I was wondering what that Keydisc was all about, with this disc you can load up a different start up message on any CD-i player. Would this be stored on the player after it is turned off, or would you need to play this Keydisc every time?
Retrostuff: "Nice, this is stuff that you don't see every day (the same goes for your player, by the way).
Interesting is the Keydisc; with the code 3094 you can customize the start-up message, as seen on one of the pictures. When it comes to portable players, Philips didn't build them (310/350/360 = Marantz, 370 = LG, the rest = Sony and Kyocera). This is only one function of the Keydisc. It works with some later Mono IV players (660, 670, 490, probably more if you change the ROM) and saves the configuration into the NVRAM."
[Thanks, Muh Mullet, retrostuff, Marcel, Rob, Videotronic, Marcel's TV Museum]