"We've positioned our CD-i system as a plug-and-play multimedia machine, and we'll be doing some heavy-duty promotions of it," which includes an ongoing infomercial, noted Steve Kleckner, vice president of sales for Philips Media Inc.
The basic CD-i machine, the Magnavox model 450, has a suggested retail price of $399 while the Magnavox model 550, which comes bundled with a digital video cartridge for playing movies, runs $499.
By September 1988 they demonstrated a CD-I system capable of rather low-resolution, quarter-screen, full-motion video.
What CDTV does not offer currently is full-motion video, but then neither does CD-I in its present state of non-release.
People in the CD-I industry-coming from the areas of film, print publishing, audio, and computer software-will be the ones to make the breakthroughs.
CD-I's second obstacle to unqualified success in the education and general-consumer markets emanates from a debate on architectures: open-architecture approaches versus a common-architecture approach based on a standard format.