Around 1996 and 1997, Philips launched the internet CD-Online services and modem for the CD-i, which allowed CD-i to go online and browse the internet. With CD-i itself being at the end of its lifespan, Philips continued developments in separate settopboxes (STB) which were able to go online by itself. In a way, this was a route of the successor of CD-i, although it was not featuring any disc media anymore. You could say these STB's were far ahead of its time. However, Philips experimented with these STB to have them run games on it as well. CD-i developer Paul Clarke explains: "We did port MAME to a prototype TriMemedia-powered STB we made at Philips Research Labs (and we also ported Doom to it) but that never went into mass production, though we did make several hundred of them for research and pre-prod reasons. My team did this software work and wrote a web browser, a colleague did the hardware, and personally as well as the browser IP code I wrote the hard drive file system. This would have been in around ‘97-‘98 I think."
"This was not for CD-I but for a prototype STB we (the team that worked on CD-i) built at Philips Research Labs. What I should do is plug it in and see if it does anything as I think there's a fair chance it will boot to Mame if the disc and capacitors aren't dead. I can't for the life of me remember what controller we used with it though! I seem to remember a game console controller but can't remember which one! I spotted the USB ports btw. A USB controller maybe? If the thing will boot then I will contact one of the developers through LinkedIn and see if he remembers what controller we used."
In a way, this could be seen as a CD-i 2 follow-up prototype. Amazing developments at Philips Research in 1997-1998, too bad they did not push this through.
[Thanks, Paul Clarke]