I have just heard that a video/audio player bought in Vietnam and brought into Australia 3 months ago, can play up to 10,000 karaoke songs from one single disc. The single and only disc that the owner has, looks just like any other compact disc and contains thousands of songs in Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and English titles. The player, in the size of any normal VCD or DVD player, can also play 'CD-R' type VCDs.

"MDV disc, poor quality, cannot get in Australia" is the responds from a local HI-FI shop.

Can any one here enlighten us on this kind of video/audio system?

-- TOMO (ong@worksafe.wa.gov.au), December 21, 1999

Answers

This is a special format of VCD called "CD-midi" : The format is similar to the normal VCD but the CD contains a compressed file for midi song. In fact, The karaoke songs are under midi files with text so one CD can contains thousands of karaoke song and one hour of video background (under mpeg 1 format). The sounds quality depends on the quality of midi files and the integrated synthesizer. I found that the music quality is pretty good since they are composed by professional musician. Obviously this is a proprietary format and you need to buy the player that supports this kind of CD (mostly manufctured by Koran company) and they are not compatible at all. And you can get the update of karaoke songs ONLY from this company, this is the real problem. This playser can also support VCD (1.1 and 2.0 , karaoke VCD included) + Audio CD (+ CDG). I have bought one (manufactured by CAVS) in VN but I have problem to get update of my CD just because the person who sells this player is ...no more legal in VN.

-- Truong Hong Duc (hdtr6639@hotmail.com), December 22, 1999.

The CD you are talking about is widely available here in the Philippines...It can be played on Hyundai P-99 Karaoke Player and Karaoke Player from CAVS...The CD only costs 100 pesos, around $5 US...I'm looking for a software that supports this kind of CD so it can be played on a Windows PC...If you can find one, pls inform me...I'm willing to buy the software if available...Sorry for my poor Englis :)

-- JUNGOY (jungoy@yahoo.com), December 02, 2003.