Thanks to our community we can show you the Panasonic CD-i player, a truely unique view: It's existence was hinted before, several people remembered the participation and demo of Panasonic with their own CD-i player, but we've never seen any picture. Until now, with an original Panasonic catalogue popping up, thanks to the efforts of Orlando Arroyo, Gluon Van, se_ke5583 and with interesting insights by Jorg Kennis. This Panasonic CD-i player was demo'ed at the Firato exhibition of 1992. Jorg Kennis remembers: "At the 1992 Firato, a Panasonic CD-i player was shown in the booth of Panasonic. They were showing some Philips CD-i titles on their own CD-i player. The unit probably never got passed the prototype stage and the demo that was shown at Firato 1992 might well be connected to a Philips CD-i player below the table! The picture we see on the cover here is probably concept art or a prototype too. But nonetheless, pretty spectacular in our world of CD-i!
The front cover gives away some nice details of unknown CD-i applications, like a CD-i Hawaii Guide with a big "Touch Me" balloon, hinting that a touchscreen was used with it. The CD-i logo on tip is different compared to what we've seen from Japan Interactive Media and the Sony CD-i players.
Panasonic never released anything CD-i related, but they were part of the team who developed CD-i (Philips, Sony and Matsushita, the parent company of Panasonic until 2008) - There were also Sony CD-i players that never were released. Somehow most companies stepped out of CD-i before it was launched by Philips. The promise of one broad platform, compared to what the Audio CD standard did, never happened with CD-i, it scattered a lot unfortunately (Playstation, 3DO, CD-i...)
[Thanks, Orlando Arroyo, Gluon Van, Jorg Kennis and se_ke5583]
