Phillips CDi VCD's

[dentoncobbler]

Hello All,

Would be very grateful to hear from anyone has been successful in playing CDi branded VCD's, (PAL), on anything other than a PAL CDi, ie. another console format with VCD/MPEG card, WMP, domestic DVD player.

Failing that, anyone who can confirm details of any region lock issues which may be encountered if I was to purchase an NTSC CDi and attempt to view the above disks.

Cheers.

[BaudAttitude]

VCDs aren't region coded, so you're safe there. There are a couple of revisions of VCD you may run in to - while early VCDs were just straight up streams, later VCD specs added stuff like menus.

Most players - and I know nothing about the CDi, so don't assume this applies - will play PAL discs, but the way they handle the 625 line to 525 line issue will vary.

Back when I bought VCDs regularly, I had a Panasonic DVD player, that simply dropped the bottom 100 lines when playing back PAL VCDs, and I also had - still have, though damned if I think I'll ever use it again - the Saturn MPEG/PhotoCD card, which squished the PAL images down to fit the whole image onto an NTSC TV. I'm not sure if it corrected for aspect ratio, but I think it did.

The second solution was obviously better. I have no idea which solution an NTSC CDi uses, if it even does play back PAL discs.