Can a CD-i player be used for accessing the Internet?
Yes. A CD-i Internet connection kit was sold by Philips in the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium as CD-Online, and in the US as Web-i. It consisted of a 14.4 Kbps modem with appropriate connection cables, a CD-i disc and the subscription data for the service which was provided by selected partners. The package allowed users to view web pages, browse trough newsgroups and send and receive e-mails. On the CD-i discs were all required software, several video clips that could be triggered from the CD-Online or Web-i homepages and some images from the most popular web sites. In that way, the CD-i disc functioned as a cache for this information. But due to the relatively slow CPU used in a CD-i player (an 68000 equivalent at 15 MHz), the decoding of simple JPEG and GIF images took a very long time and when done they looked rather jerky on the TV screen. Therefore, the CD-i Internet kit did not became popular among CD-i users. It was impossible to speed up the decoding process due to CD-i inter
