The computer developments of the New Media Systems department within Philips do not show a lot of details of what Philips visioned to be a multimedia link between their formats: PC, CD-i, MSX, how could they be linked in the future? The 'House of the Future' in Rosmalen showed a prototype of this, in a folder there was a picture of it that we posted here. In this picture, another 'concept' picture by Philips Design, shows the same design as what we know of the CD-i 180 set, but this time again, it is different with other concept designed in as well. Compared to the previous picture, we see the MSX module at the bottom, the printer at the top. It's a very interesting concept that in the end, most probably never saw the light of day.
This was the Philips Home Interactive System.
It was a convergence of media activities by New Media Systems, for tasks in the home office, created by Philips Research and Philips Design in the late eighties. It was a modular system that offered a lot of flexibility. The innovation that Philips developed in optical media was the foundation to further standardize these formats, including CD-ROM, CD-i, Photo CD and Video CD, even MSX, but also television (cable, sattelite), radio, telefax (and other upcoming telecommunication tools).
By the time the CD-i 180 set was ready to be launched, not much was left of the 'Home Interactive idea', but the term 'Interactive' is a leftover of the vision to combine and standardize these multimedia formats.