There were several companies who released their own CD-i player. Next to that, Philips released their CD-i players under different brands. What was the case with the unknown SBR CD-i player?
SBR stands for "Société Belge Radio-Electrique" and is (was) in fact the biggest manufacturer of radios in Belgium. In its final years the SBR brand transformed a bit more into a broader electronic company by releasing existing models of Philips televisions and releasing them under the SBR brand. But that's mainly because SBR was taken over by Philips around 1955.
It was always believed that SBR licensed the model from Philips as an OEM product. But in fact this is just a Philips player put on the market with a different brand. Philips had more of these inhouse brands like Magnavox and Aristona. We are not aware of a lot of SBR products and it was mainly sold in Belgium as the brand name SBR is well known in this country.
There's nothing special about the SBR version of the CD-i 470, except for the branding. SBR has a rich history that goes back to 1922, which makes the brand quite legendary in the radio world.
The rich history of SBR shows a little in the enormous merchandise collection SBR put out in the past 90 years.
The CD-i 4000 was released in 1995 and that was also the final year of SBR as a brand. We're not aware of other CD-i players by SBR, but it's a strange move by Philips to put out a few products under the SBR brand in the ninetees, Early 2000 Philips streamlined its product portfolio which meant all B-brands were put aside. There are no Aristona products anymore, no Magnavox products in Europe (Magnavox is nowadays again USA only) and no SBR products.
