CD-i member Jacob Davis shows us his Memorex CD-i player and guides us through his attempts of repairing and cleaning it here. Meanwhile, the Memorex brand is always an interesting story on CD-i. Perhaps just a few of you remember that (Silicon Valley based) Memorex
released a CD-i (buy for resale) version of the Philips 910/205 player
in 1991/1992. Interesting because Memorex (at that time owned by Tandy,
struggled with their Videogame console named VIS (Tandy Memorex Visual
Information System (VIS) was an interactive, multimedia CD-ROM player
produced by the Tandy Corporation starting in 1992. It was similar in
function to the Philips CD-i. The VIS systems were sold only at Radio
Shack, under the Memorex brand, both of which Tandy owned at the time.)
The Memorex CD-i player was sold by Tandy in the UK. Tandy was also
available in Australia, which would be interesting as I've never seen
before any CD-i activity in Australia. Memorex entered the consumer media business in 1971. In 1988 Memorex
International acquired the Telex Corporation becoming Memorex Telex NV, a
corporation based in the Netherlands, which survived as an entity until
the middle 1990s. When CD-i and CD-ROM were both upcoming on the
market, Memorex licensed the 910 model by Philips to explore the
possibilities how it would in their business. The market went to CD-ROM
so the CD-i model by Memorex was the only effort they did in CD-i. The
company evolved into a provider of information technology solutions
including the distribution and integration of data network and storage
products and the provision of related services in 18 countries
worldwide.
At one point the company was "Memorex Telex" as outlined in a dizzying
tour-de-force of the development of disk drives, holding close lines
with Philips who was producing home computers at that time. Memorex
Telex N.V., a corporation based in The Netherlands, survived as an
entity of the original Memorex until the middle 1990s[1]. Unisys spun
out the media, communications and IBM end user sales and service
organization as Memorex. Subsequently Memorex merged with Telex. The
company evolved into a provider of information technology solutions. One
of those solutions was to bring CD-i to places in the US as a OEM
project. As far as I know the Memorex CD-i activities were limited to a
OEM license. The fact Memorex standed out as a dutch company is a
possible reason to expain the contacts with Philips.
