We are proud to announce that our CD-i Group, including Interactive Dreams, The Black Moon Project and The New International CD-i Association (ICDIA), now has a physical place to experience our CD-i collections: The Home Computer Museum in Helmond, The Netherlands. This is the first step where we exhibited the extensive CD-i archive of ICDIA in an actual museum so we can all view, remember and even experience everything CD-i related. This collection is an addition to the existing CD-i collection that was already present at the museum, but with the addition of this CD-i collection it has grown to the largest CD-i section in a museum ever.
The beauty is: You can all visit and enjoy it! Thanks to the supervision of the museum staff, you can play and experience one of the discs in one of the CD-i players that is running here every day. The current workhorse is the 21TCDI30 CD-i TV combination , but you can also play on a CD-i 220, a CD-i 470, a CD-i 910 and a CD-i 450. We also have a full CD-i 180 set and various portable CD-i players here.
But let's dive a little deeper in the background of The New International CD-i Association. It is on the one hand our best viewed technical CD-i resource including valuable technical documents describing the CD-i system. You can visit it here. It is currently maintained by cdifan, the guy behind CD-i Emulator, and for years built up by Jorg Kennis. Both are very valuable to our CD-i community. On the other hand, the ICDIA has a rich history in the story of CD-i, going back to the days when CD-i was being developed worldwide. So what is the history of this CD-i collection?
First about the ICDIA. In the late 80s, when CD-i was just beginning to emerge, worldwide three associations were set up by a number of industry bodies to support the development and marketing of CD-i hardware and software products. Among the members were CD-i hardware manufacturers, CD-i peripheral manufacturers, CD-i software producers, disc duplicators, CD-i authoring tool development companies and dozens of others. These three organizations (the American CD-i Association, the European CD-i Association and the Japanese CD-i Association) merged into the International CD-i Association (ICDIA) in the mid 90s. This new organization continued to support to the CD-i industry.
By the end of the decade, it became clear that DVD and other new generation platforms were going to take over in areas were CD-i has been very succesfull. For this, the people behind the ICDIA set up the IDMA (Interactive Digital Media Association) and the DVDA (DVD Association). No priority was given anymore to ICDIA's CD-i related activities. However, there continued to be a huge demand for CD-i information and requests for CD-i support.
By the beginning of 2000, the ICDIA decided to join forces with KennisOnline.com. This organization has experience in CD-i software and hardware development of over 10 years. In a mutual agreement it was decided that the Internet would become the major medium for the ICDIA to use, and that KennisOnline.com would become responsible for all Internet related activities of the ICDIA, such as setting up and maintaining a website and providing e-mail support. Only the official real-life ICDIA activities (such as contact with members on exhibitions) remain to be a responsibility of the former ICDIA and current DVDA staff. To make clear that a new era in Internet based CD-i support has begun, the name of the International CD-i Association on the Internet was changed into The New International CD-i Association.
So that's the story behind the ICDIA. But where does all this CD-i software and hardware come from? That's the story behind Jorg Kennis. In short: The majority of the collection origins from the official Philips CD-i archive at Philips IMS (Philips Interactive Media Systems). Jorg was involved in various CD-i projects at Philips IMS at an early stage. The whole collections was built up between 1989 (When CD-i was not even released but being developed) until 1999, when responsibilties of ICDIA were handed over to Jorg. For example, Jorg was responsible for test- and bugreports that were needed to release new CD-i players on the market. He also tested the authoring tools (hardware and software) that were developed at Philips IMS in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Thanks to his contacts with the CD-i developers at IMS, he was often given software and hardware to keep. That's how most of the consumer CD-i titles collection was built up.
In 1999, Jorg was given the opportunity to work at Philips Disc Systems (back then the official name of this department). In 1999, Philips produced the very last CD-i player (the professional CD-i 670 player) at this place. Philips Disc Systems was the place where professional CD-i players were developed and for testing they had a huge collection of professional CD-i discs. As these discs were never released on the commercial / consumer market, these professional CD-i discs are very rare.
Jorg started The New International CD-i Association in 1999 after taking over responsibility of The International CD-i Association (see above) and with that the website ICDIA.org was born. Around that time he worked at Philips doing research into the transition of professional CD-i towards DVD and Web. In order to combine the archives of consumer and professional CD-i titles, he was donated the Philips Professional CD-i Archive, which now takes up one third of the total CD-i collection.
As the website in these days was still hosted at the original hosting place of ICDIA, in 2005 we initiated The CDInteractive Network, which is still active today. ICDIA moved its archive to a new domain at www.ICDIA.co.uk - The same place that is still active today. With this in mind, ICDIA is the longest running CD-i website that is available on the internet (since 1999) with an archive that goes back to 1989!
So that's the story behind the CD-i collection of ICDIA. We are proud to collaborate with Bart van den Akker, the owner behind The Home Computer Museum in Helmond, The Netherlands. It is a fully interactive museum where you can experience the full collection of home computers from the past. They host home computers of all manufacturers that were active in the home computer business, including Atari, Apple, IBM, Commodore, Nintendo, Compaq, Epson and of course Philips (who made much more than just the CD-i, including P2000, MSX, Videopac, Odyssey and various PC's). They also have a repair place to restore and repair every computer (A tip if you want to repair your CD-i player!).
In all, a valuable place to visit if you are in the neighbourhood. The Home Computer Museum is located at Nrd Koninginnewal 28, 5701 NK Helmond.
In the future, we plan to extend the CD-i section even further with our other CD-i collections of our members. It is a nice step to put CD-i a little more forward to remember it as a part of Noord-Brabant's cultural heritage. Many thanks to Bart van den Akker for making this possible!
[Thanks: Jorg Kennis, ICDIA.co.uk, Home Computer Museum, Bart van den Akker]