The Philips CD-i system launched on the market in 1991. 5 years earlier, in 1986, CD-i was first mentioned and announced by Philips. At least, that is what different sources claim. The oldest true CD-i disc dates from 1988, which we showed you here. As far as we can trace back history, the CD-i standard was generally ready in 1988. However, the official release was delayed several times. In an interview that Dale Sharone gave with John, he explained a bit about the CD-i release: "I had originally planned to be at Spinnaker only one year as Philips was planning to release the CD-i machine in 1988. That one year turned into four, due to constant delays with the hardware emulation systems and the operating system. I think the launch was closer to 1991. Unfortunately for Philips, as each year passed, cd technology made more inroads into being a standard part of the PC and Mac computers. And, while the PC was getting more memory and faster processors, Philips chose to stay with the original 1987 specification using the 68000 chip. This was the original 68000 found in the first Macintosh computers. It was dreadfully slow and severely limited what was possible with the system. "
In a 1994 Wired article CD-i member Jorg Kennis found the following quote: "Philips had made an early video game system called the Magnavox Odyssey and had asked Microware to collaborate on a new product - originally envisioned as a type of rack-mountable game system. (It eventually evolved into CD-i.) After evaluating systems from 60 other companies, Philips decided to ask Microware to develop CD-i's CD-RTOS, the operating system in every Philips CD-i System.Microware got the CD-i contract in January 1986, and in the summer of 1986 Kaplan got a phone call from Silicon Valley. Bill Gates wanted to buy the company. " This looks like the oldest CD-i reference we've found so far: January 1986. If that was the moment that Philips decided to go for OS-9 to be used in their new multimedia format, Philips was at least researching/exploring the CD-i project in 1985!
[Thanks, Jorg Kennis, John Scszepaniak, Dale DeSharone]
