The final CD-i players by Philips were produced in 1999, these were the so-called 'Multi Media Controllers', probably because of their connectivity possibilities with DVD players. But to be honest, we haven't seen this feature anywhere. Still it is put to the forefront on these players. The most visible aspect is in the player shell. When you start up these players, you're welcomed by the player shell (still the second generation) but instead of CD-Interactive in the logo, it now says CD-MMC. So the word Interactive is changed by MMC. When we have a closer look, we see on the front panel that there is only the word 'Interactive', instead of CD-i like on other players.
In the player shell there is another difference: The Play button says 'Play CD' instead of 'Play CD-i'. It looks like Philips is carefully avoiding the name CD-i. Could it be because of its reputation by then, in 1999?
It is a fact that in 1999 CD-i had a bad name. It was peak negativity for CD-i. It was seen as a huge loss for Philips. Moreover it was already decided for years that CD-i would be discontinued. (It is surprising Philips produced its final (professional) CD-i player in 1999, then). The fact that CD-i had a bad reputation might have been the reason why the term 'CD-i' was downplayed as much as possible in these players. Although that these Multi Media Controllers were named like this because of their connectivity with DVD players (we've never seen this in practice), it seems like this was not the main reason to take away the name CD-i and pushed the term MMC.
It is typical the front panel only shows Interactive, instead of Compact Disc Interactive like on all other CD-i players. When we have a close look in its brochure, we see the following:
"Based on Philips Industry leading Compact Disc Technology" - CD-i is completely wiped away from the historical relevance. Another detail is seen in the player menu again, with the Play button only showing 'Play CD' instead of 'Play CD-i' like on all other CD-i players. We think that, as CD-i was already declared 'dead' in these years, while these players had yet to hit the market, the marketing team did their best to avoid the name CD-i and pushed the term MMC in order to give this player a higher chance of success in the market.
It's actually a thought that is shared with a few other CD-i members as well, and I like the discussion :) - Philips didn't get the chance of its management to build further on the CD-MMC brand anyway, as CD-i was already cancelled, it might have been a try to keep their CD business alive in the upcoming DVD war. They knew CD-i was cancelled, so why marketing the brand in 1998. It's food for thought, and it's true there's no evidence for stuff like this, For me it's clear that Philips wasn't pushing CD-i to the forefront as a multimedia format that allows playback of various other formats. Just as how they started with The Imagination Machine, that was able to play CD-i, CD+Graphics, CD-Audio. CD-i was a part of it. Later, CD-i was pushed forward, stating a CD-i player was able to play Video-CD, Audio CD and Photo CD. And with CD-MMC, they changed it again. A CD-MMC player was able to play CD-i, Video CD, Photo CD and so on. That's the way of marketing that is visible to us. Speculation of why they did that is open for discussion ;)
[Thanks, Jorg Kennis, Retrostuff]