Just when you thought you'd figured out how to programme your VCR, your TV is about to become interactive. Chris Gibbons looks at the latest generation of compact discs.

Phillips call it The Imagination Machine. And once you've seen CDI technology at work - or play - on it, home entertainment will never be the same again.

CDI - or Compact Disc Interactive to give it its full name - is a candy store of audio-visual treats. Imagine a system that is a CD player, VCR, computer game player and a slide projector all in one and you have some idea why CDI is being heralded as the most exciting development in entertainment since moving pictures.

Developed by Philips, the inventors of the audio cassette, compact discs and CD-ROM, CDI is designed to put the cutting edge of digital technology at the consumers' fingertips in an easy-to-use, one world standard format. Unlike CD-ROM, which is computer-based and therefore has more software flexibility but cannot be played back through a regular TV, CDI is digital imagination for the masses.

Philips' Imagination Machine, which retails in Bermuda for about $799, looks similar but slightly larger than a regular home CD player. It plugs into any TV, will play back your regular audio CDs - and much more. CDI discs, which cost from around $35 to $69 in Bermuda, look exactly the same as a regular CD but carry graphics, text, photographs and even broadcast quality videos, all withCD-quality sound. There's a Philips portable version with a six-inch LCD screen (hence the $2,000-plus price tag) that can also be hooked up to any TV monitor, making it ideal for sales presentations.

The beauty of CDs was that you could select which tracks you wanted to play and in what order. Now CDI is taking that a step further. Using a mouse, remote control or rollerball as you would with a computer, you can select which parts of a programme you want to see, ask for more information, skip backwards and forwards and so on, hence the `interactive' label. And like audio CDs, CDI discs are world standard and will play on systems in Manchester, England and Manchester, New Hampshire, giving the system a huge edge on videos.

CDI is so easy your kids are already using it. Two demonstration screens are set up in the children's Discovery Room at the Aquarium, featuring two CDI discs, Tell Me Why and Compton's Encyclopedia, operated by special over-sized, brightly-coloured child-safe trackballs. Since they were set up by local multimedia company Five Rings in November 1992, they have proved highly popular with youngsters and teachers. Jack Ward, curator of the Aquarium and Zoo, says: "We've recently ha d a series of events where we've invited teachers along to tour the facility and one of the things they've really been interested in is the CDI, particularly the reality that you can have an entire encyclopedia on one disc. It's a pretty remarkable resource.'' Operating a CDI is as simple as clicking a TV remote control - and, for the technically challenged, a lot easier than programming today's hi-tech VCRs. There aren't even any written instructions - all the help you need is right on screen in front of you.

For example, slip in a copy of the Comptons CD-Interactive Encyclopedia, which currently comes free with every Philips CDI player, and you have immediate access to the equivalent of 26 volumes - on a single disc that is updated every year. Let's have a geography lesson ... Russia, say. Open up the topic and you can scroll up and down text asin a regular encyclopedia, zoom in and out of maps, go on a guided slide tour of the country and learn all about Boris Yeltsin. It will even give dictionary descriptions of difficult words, if required.

Or type in a topic - religion, for example. Up comes a menu of religious subjects covering every religion from Islam to Zen Buddhism. Or click on the Time Machine and pick a decade. From there you can go to the major events in politics, sports, arts or science from those years.

"It's much more interactive than video,'' says Donna Bennett of Island Satellite Systems, who have been selling the systems since March. "Kids have more choices and it rewards curiosity. It's great for kids who aren't into books.'' One drawback at present is that printing out any of this information is costly. A video printer, that can output print quality stills, retails for about $900 in the US but prices are expected to tumble as the technology is fine-tuned. Before long, users will be able to cut, copy, paste and print like any desktop publishing programme.

There are already scores of CDI discs on the market covering every topic from kids learning programmes to cookery, music and photography classes, sophisticated sports games , biographies and documentaries. Time Life Photography, for example, enables you to take simulated pictures, see the results and listen to a critique. In the Palm Springs Open golf game, you select the club, position a real golfer and control the swing, while ABC sportscasters commentate candidly on your shot . "They told me to take up tennis,'' quipped Donna Bennett.

CDI machines will also play Photo-CDs. For $24.95, using a Kodak mailing envelope available from Island Satellite, you can have your 24-exposure film developed and returned not only with prints but with the images on a CDI disc.

Photo-CD enables you to zoom in and out of shots, crop them, create montages and add sound captions, text and graphics. As each disc holds up to 100 images, additional films can be added later.

All this, however, is just the beginning. The next step is FMV, or full motion video. At present, videos on CDI move at a slightly jerky 15 frames per second, much like a computer game. FMV enables them to be shown at 30 frames per second, the same as regular feature films. By Christmas, Philips will have a cartridge on the market that will plug into the back of CDI players enabling them to show full-screen, full-motion videos and from next year, CDI players will come FMV-ready. The cartridge will cost around $290 in the US.

FMV will do more than just bring high quality moving pictures to CDI. Like other CDI software, it will be totally interactive. Through a process called Seamless Jump, viewers will be able to watch a movie from a different character's perspective, choose an alternative ending to a mystery, change the angle of a shot, or zoom in and out of scenes. Unlike videos, viewers can jump back and forth at the click of a remote and, because the programme is digital, run seven levels of slow motion or freeze frames at far superior quality to videos without the risk of wearing out videotape.

One drawback is that presently, CDI discs can only accomodate 72 minutes of FMV and means many movies may initially be released on two discs. However, CDI players are on the way that will hold up to five discs and automatically switch from one movie disc to another without the viewer noticing.

Paramount Pictures last month signed a multi-year deal with Philips to put full-length movies on CDI, while Sting, Tina Turner, U2, Diana Ross, Eric Clapton and BillyRay Cyrus are among the major artists featured in new full screen, full motion, digital music titles announced by Philips in June. But this new generation of music videos will be much more than what you're used to seeing on MTV. On their recent Zoo Tour, Irish rock band U2 used CDI technology to alter accompanying images while on stage, therefore making every show unique. Now, on their latest CDI release, viewers can do the same.

Innovative American rock musician roducer Todd Rundgren has taken it a step further. On Rundgren's new CDI disc, viewers can actually rearrange instruments on individual tracks to produce infinite customised versions of his songs with video footage.

Even magazines have already been produced on CDI discs, enabling readers to view a videoed editorial or delve deeper into features or graphics that catch their interest. So who knows - one day you may find a shiny plastic RG taped to the outside of your Royal Gazette instead of inside it! AUGUST 1993 RG MAGAZINE