Release Notes

Below you will find abbreviated release notes and links to the full release notes for the various programs available from the Downloads section.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta7 for Windows

This version has a built-in 2025/01/01 date limit and will not be functional after that date.

This is a small bugfix release and probably the last beta release for version 0.5.3, which is now in maintenance mode as all development has shifted to version 0.6.0. These are the user-visible new features:

A new debugger command "ewk" has been added to kill watch addresses.
Additional help lines explaining parameters have been added for some debugger commands.
VDSC mode bit sampling timing has been changed to avoid some title issues.
Pixel-based transparency processing has been improved to fix some regression issues.

This beta version is essentially a limited edition, unless you have already activated an unlimited edition on your machine or you're using a Philips Mono-I player system ROM. The latter exception allows for full compability tests against the MESS/MAME CD-i driver.

See the Player Support and DVC Support sections and the Full Release Notes for more information.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta6 for Windows

This version has a built-in 2024/01/01 date limit and will not be functional after that date.

This is a public bugfix release, but it is hugely out of date with the current development version 0.6.0. The only reason for this release is to get a working version available again. These are the user-visible new features:

Emulation speed throttling has been fixed for modern machines.
The contents of the CD-i NVRAM (non-volatile memory) can now be saved to a file.
All web links now use the secure HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta5 for Windows

This version is no longer functional because of a built-in 2020/01/01 date limit and will immediately display a "You have exceeded the evaluation time limit" message after starting emulation.

This was a non-public bugfix release, mainly intented for compatibility testing. These are the user-visible new features:

CD-i 180 pointing device emulation has been fixed with a temp hack.
The RGB555 video mode is now correctly decoded.
A small number of minor bugs have been fixed.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta4 for Windows

This version is no longer functional because of a built-in 2019/01/01 date limit and will immediately display a "You have exceeded the evaluation time limit" message after starting emulation.

This was a bugfix release. These are the user-visible new features:

CD-i 180 emulation is now supported, although the pointing device does not work.
A faster and more flexible video combiner has been implemented; as a result there may be some new video emulation bugs.
A small number of minor bugs have been fixed.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta3 for Windows

Snapshot pictures can now be saved by selecting Emulate | Snapshot or pressing its shortcut key F12. The snapshot picture will be written to a subdirectory of the snap directory.
Support for SCSI disks and tapes has been added (only for CD-i 60x).

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta2 for Windows

This version is no longer functional because of a built-in 2012/01/01 date limit and will immediately display a "You have exceeded the evaluation time limit" message after starting emulation.

This was mainly a bugfix release. It fixes the problem where the 0.5.3-beta1 version displays a "You have exceeded the evaluation time limit" message immediately after starting emulation. A small number of minor bugs have also been fixed.

The internals of CD-i Emulator have been restructured somewhat to enable OS-9 emulation, but this functionality is not yet included in this public release. There is only one user-visible new feature:

Color-coding of the disc timecode display has been added: TOC / CR-ROM / CD-I / CD-DA, based on a suggestion by Anna Wu.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta1 for Windows

This version is no longer functional because of a built-in 2011/01/01 date limit and will immediately display a "You have exceeded the evaluation time limit" message after starting emulation.

You need a reasonable (2010) PC running Windows XP or newer; on modern PC's you should have very good emulation performance. My current development dual core Pentium 2.1 GHz laptop using Windows 7 often gets 30/50 video performance or better. This will drop somewhat when MPEG is played but it is still quite good. Audio skipping should to be a thing of the past (except when writing video to a file).

A number of existing CD-i title compatibility problems have been solved for this version and a number of new CD-i player models are now fully or minimally supported.

Important new features added for this version are the following:

Support for CHD disc image files (compatible with MESS/MAME)
Support for writing AVI, PNG or WAV files
Support for controlling the CD-i pointing device with the keyboard
Support for recording and playing back CD-i input events
Support for online CD-i title and player compatibility reporting
Proof-of-concept support for MPEG playing on Gate Array MPEG cartridges

This version of CD-i Emulator incorporates source code from MESS/MAME used to support the CHD file format and the writing of AVI and PNG files. Such re-use is allowed by the MESS/MAME license which is basically BSD.

This beta version is essentially a limited edition, unless you have already activated an unlimited edition on your machine or you're using a Philips Mono-I player system ROM. The latter exception allows for full compability tests against the MESS CD-i driver.

See the Full Release Notes for more information.

CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.2 for Windows

This was the first public release of CD-i Emulator, with the Limited Edition available for free and the Unlimited Edition available for a small fee.

You need a reasonably fast (2005) PC to get acceptable emulation performance; a Pentium 1.5 GHz is probably about minimal. On a Pentium 1.8 GHz using Windows 2000 I get approximately 15/50 video performance with occasional audio skipping; my development Pentium 2.6 GHz using Windows XP does around 22/50. The emulator enforces a minimum video performance of 5/50 or 6/60 (at least 10 video updates per second of emulated time); if your hardware cannot keep up you will not be able to emulate in real-time and audio will always skip (you can of course turn off the audio to avoid the latter).

There are a few issues with audio and video decoding; some audio (in particular ADPCM level A) will produce a high-pitched whine in addition to the actual audio and there are a few corner cases where video decoding is known to be incorrect (in particular, RGB555, interlaced video and compatibility mode have not been fully implemented yet).

This version supports only raw CD-i and CD-i Ready disc image files as produced by many CD grabbing and burning applications; emulation directly from CD is not planned for the near future.

See the Full Release Notes for more information.

CD-i Link, version 0.5.2 for Windows

This version of the CD-i Link program offers improved serial port compatibility and recognizes more CD-i player models. Usage has also been improved slightly, but it is still a command-line program (no Windows GUI). The program includes the cditypes-0.5.2 rules file.

The default baudrate used by the CD-i Link program is 9600 baud; at this speed uploading the ROMs from a typical CD-i player (around 768KB) takes about 15 minutes.

CD-i Stub, version 0.5.1

These stub programs should work on all CD-i players supporting a serial port according to the Green Book. The cdi_stub program is also included with CD-i Link. Also included is version 0.5.1 of the CD-i Link program (cdilink) and CD-i executables with sources for the various "stub" programs that communicate with cdilink.

It has been reported that the burned CD-i disc does not work on some players. A new version of cdi_stub is in the works that should fix this; it will scan the ROMs for serial ports missing from the CSD and allow the user to choose the serial port in case there is more then one.