Digital Video cartridges

This page lists all versions of the Digital Video cartridge. Please refer to the CD-i Players Comparison Chart to see which players require which cartridge.



22ER9141 / 22ER9143

Large cartridge with 100 pins connection. Feeds decoded video as an analogue signal into the player.

22ER9956

Small cartridge with 120 pins connection. Feeds decoded video as a digital signal into the player.


Version AH# ROM Compatibility Chipset
22ER9143 00 1.0 Green Gate Array
22ER9143 01 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 Green Gate Array
22ER9143 02 2.1 Green Gate Array
22ER9141/00 02 2.3 Green Gate Array
22ER9141/00 03 3.x Green/White Gate Array
22ER9141/20 00 4.1 Green/White VMPEG
22ER9956/20 00 5.x Green/White VMPEG
22ER9956/40 00 6.x Green/White IMPEG

Note: The 22ER9424 is indentical to the 22ER9141, except that the board is delivered without a cartridge housing and with a modified ROM. It is intented for the professional players CDI 604 and CDI 605/20.

Terms and abreviations

Version
The version of the cartridge is indicated by the number behind the slash. An increment of 20 means a complete new version occupying a new chipset. The 22ER9143 was only used as a prototype cartridge for demonstrations and early authoring, since it does not contain the extra 1 MB of main RAM. It is not sold onto the consumer market.

AH#
The AH indication is a further refinement of indicating a particular version of a /00, /20 or /40 edition. An increased AH number does not refer to a different chipset, but usually indicated a ROM or firmware update.

Compatibility
A CD-i Digital Video Cartridge is capable of showing moving MPEG video in a resolution of up to 384x288. This will then fill the entire screen. However, the MPEG video stream on a Video-CD is only up to 352x288. This would mean that there will be small black bars at both sides of the screen. To accomplish for this, the cartridge was modified to display slightly larger pixels when a White Book Video-CD stream was detected. Note that old cartridges can also play back White Book discs, but that the image does not fill the entire screen in this case.

Chipset
Indicates which MPEG decoding chipset is used. The Gate Array 3 is used to have some decoding problems, for example resulting in the display of green spots or "ghost sprites" in the image. Therefore, a new version of the 22ER9141 cartridge was released (22ER9141/20). The "I" in IMPEG stands for integrated, since the audio and video decoding chips are integrated in one IC in this version.


Note: Some of the items listed on this page are available from
The CD-i Store.

Back to previous page | Main screen | E-mail & Contact

© Copyright 2005 CDinteractive.co.uk and ICDIA