MovieCD is a largely failed format for movies on CDROM. This format was designed to be decoded in software on 486 class systems, although they recommend a Pentium. It uses the Motion Pixels software compresson codecs. But the quality just couldn't compare to DVD, VCD, or even to RealPlayer. These films generally come on a set of two CDROMs, but barely end up looking much better than streaming video. The MovieCD format never did become popular, and is now superceded by every codec imaginable, but you can still buy them anyway.
SIRIUS is the main distributor of MovieCD format movies. What is truely killing off MovieCD format isn't the low quality. It is the lack of quality titles and the inability to play the discs on anything other than a PC. Looking over my MovieCD catalog I see a few good titles, (Seven, Menace II Society, and The Lawnmower Man). But the rest of the catalog is filled with winners such as Leprechaun 2, Trancers 3 and educational titles such as BullySmart. Who would want to build a Movie collection based around those titles.
The other major problem is The Motion Pixels Movie Player. The software that played the movies. The player performs nicely under Windows 3.1 and fairly well on Windows 95, (without DirectX). But it is highly unstable under Windows 98. There is however a workaround to that problem. Windows Media Player can play the movies after you install the Motion Pixels software. But windows media player will not be able to properly skip to different parts of the movie.
MovieCD has a website at www.moviecd.com if you check that out you will see the one really good thing about MovieCD. They are really cheap. Many of them only cost $1.99. They also have many softcore porn, (Playboy mostly), titles for $2.99 and up. But the low prices still cannot make up for the low quality. I would suggest passing on MovieCD format, unless you like to pay for movies that look like a Realplayer clip.