When browsing through our local thrift store I came across an old book by Chriet Titulaer. In this book there was another reference that the Philips car navigation program (CARIN) was actually using CD-i: The maps would be released on a CD-i and the navigator would run CD-i software. This was all future talk, but the CARIN navigation system was actually released by Philips, around the same time that CD-i was introduced, or even a bit earlier (1987-1990). In the end product there is no mentioning of CD-i whatsoever, which keeps us looking for info what is left of these references: Was CARIN actually using the CD-i platform?
Philips has been active in car navigation for a long time and their Research group was always trying to find synergy between their technologies. It actually does make sense that they at least explored the possibilities of using the CD-i format. But to us it is unknown if CARIN actually runs on CD-i hardware or just software, it could be that it runs on a 68000 including OS-9, it doesn't specifically has to be the Green Book I guess. Or would just the file format of the maps-disc be according to the CD-i format, including audio/video codecs?
Still, several developers actually are convinced that CARIN was indeed planned to use CD-i as its format. And maybe just the first version actually did use the CD-i format. Later versions of CARIN do not use CD-i, that seems highly questionable. But this first version might hold another CD-i secret.
So... Who owns an original Philips CARIN set? It would be interesting to find a disc with the maps, to explore the contents to find out if there are any resemblances with CD-i at all.
[Thanks, Jorg Kennis, CD-i Fan]