Two weeks back we published some interesting details about the CD-i Thumbstick Commander. Next to the third action button on the top, this CD-i commander gives away a reference to an unknown CD-i prototype. Have a look at the manual of the CD-i commander that was bundled with the CD-i 740:
As you can see, the remote features two buttons that are actually not functional for the CD-i 740: The 'disc up' and 'disc down' button.
Jorg Kennis told us about this: "There were plans to release a 5-disc CD-i disc changer (a carrousel) and it seems that with the release of the CD-i 740, the CD-i commander was already prepared to switch discs. The CD-i Product Manager told us that they were testing to show the CD-i disc cover on the CD-i shell menu. Each CD-i disc already has a title written in the Disc Label (the volume identifier), but not every producer was very accurate in using this. "
There are actually some non-Philips CD-i players that show us the name of the disc (by reading the volume identifier) in the CD-i menu, like the Kyocera CD-i player:
But Philips never used this feature in their CD-i players. cdifan has some interesting additional details:"The 'mounting' of a seperate/other CD-i disc was already described in the Green Book. Also in the CSD there is a space reserved for this"
CD-i disc changers were far more popular in USA rather than in Europe, so especially for the USA market this was an interesting option for Philips. Unfortunately, when it was considered in 1998, there was hardly any CD-i activity left in the USA...
We wonder how far the development of this CD-i 5-disc carrousel actually went. If it was tested in the software (as the CD-i commander actually has buttons designed for it) there should be at least be a real prototype somewhere. These 'disc up' and 'disc down' button on the CD-i commander suggest that something was in the pipeline!
It is actually pretty lazy to bundle a remote including non-functional buttons with the CD-i 740. It feeds the theory that Philips changed the design of the 5-disc CD-i carrousel into the current CD-i 740 model on the latest possible moment in the development cycle!
The picture on the top is about the 700-series CD-i carrousel player by Philips for audio discs. It was released around the same time that Philips the CD-i 740. It would be very well possible the CD-i disc changer would have looked a lot like this one!
[Thanks, cdifan, Jorg Kennis]