CD-i member Jer Main Vur Link found a fully new CD-i Internet Kit, which s pretty rare to find and thankfully he made some nice pictures of it. Jer Main Vur Link explains: "I found this CD-i Internet pakket. Yes it is a modem made for the Netherlands. I never seen one before, and this one is never used. (box is damaged only). I never seen one and didn't know it existed. The price on the box was 181.06 Gulden (Gulden is Netherlands currency before the euro: 1 euro was at switch 2.20 Gulden) I don't know if this was the original retail price. For the CD-i 205,210,220 the cable from the modem used the input port. For the 450 there was a special splitter cable available (Did not came with the box). The pamphlet says, that the person who got this is one of the first persons is who got internet on the television with the CD-i Internet pakket. The cost where: to start 20 Gulden . After that it cost 15 Gulden monthly for 2 hours of Internet!! after that you payed 3.95 Gulden each hour. With the thoughts of today totally crazy but that was a other time."
Internet services on the CD-i devices were facilitated by the use of an additional hardware modem and "CD-Online" disc (renamed Web-i in the US, which Philips initially released in Britain in 1995 for $150 US. This service provided the CD-i with full internet access (with a 14.4k modem), including online shopping, email, and support for networked multiplayer gaming on select CD-i games. The service required a CD-i player with DV cartridge, and an "Internet Starter Kit" which initially retailed for £99.99. It was advertized as bringing "full Internet access to the living room on TV screens".
Andy Stout, a writer for the official CD-i magazine, explained CD-Online: "It is very much Internet-lite. The main advantages are that it's cheap - probably working out at a third of the cost of a PC or Mac solution - and incredibly user-friendly. The downside though is using a browser that doesn't support Netscape, and coping with all the drawbacks of the machine's minuscule memory - you can only ever access 10 articles on Usenet at a time, it'll only support 80 bookmarks maximum and for all that trouble all your saved games, preferences, and high scores will have been written over in RAM. ... It's got the full access right now but with only about 40% of the functionality, which will probably be fine for people who don't know what they're missing. But the virtual keyboard is a complete nightmare to use ..."
The CD-Online service went live in the UK on October 25, 1995 and in March 1996 in the Netherlands (for 399 guilders) and also released in Belgium. The system was reportedly scheduled to launch in the US as "Web-i" in August 1996. The domain cd-online.co.uk, which was used for the British CD-Online service, went offline in 2000. Only one game was released that supported CD-Online, the First-person shooter game RAM Raid. RAM Raid was the first worldwide enabled online multiplayer game. Players from any country in the world could compete against each other as long as they had a copy of the game.
On the pictures below you'll see the original CD-Online disc, the only one that doesn't include Ram Raid.
[Thanks, Jer Main Lur Vink]