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615 player and Digital Video


Background

There were reports that certain CD-i titles containing MPEG assets exhibited a problem when played on the CDI615 DV player. The symptom of the problem was a band of video noise appearing intermittently across the bottom 10% of the screen.

These discs can sometimes be played many times before the problem will appear, and even then the problem can be intermittent. The same problem does not appear when these discs are played on other models of CD-i players.


Analysis

Discs exhibiting this problem were investigated by Philips Interactive Media Systems (PIMS), Industrial Activities, Hasselt, Belgium. These investigations yielded the following:


Conclusion

It is the conclusion of PIMS that as a matter of practice, developers should try to avoid mixing NTSC and PAL assets in the same application. Since this is not always possible, when such mixing of assets is necessary MPEG streams must always be properly terminated with an end-of-ISO and end-of-stream. Indeed, MPEG streams should always be properly terminated.

PIMS has acknowledged that the affected discs will play correctly on other players. While the exact reason is under investigation, it seems likely to be due to differing decoder chip sets. Nonetheless, it is the position of PIMS that the problem in question is still an application issue, rather than the result of player hardware.



The information on this page is summarized from a Technical Information Bulletin issued 10/03/96 by Philips Professional Products.


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