Part 2 on the Compact Disc (PART 1)
References and Further info
This has been the most intense researching I have done so far for the Snacking Otaku, finding any information on the development of obscure formats. they were A LOT of rabbit holes, including an early CD-based console by Mattel developed in 1987-88, which seems almost non-existent! They are articles mentioning it been in the works. And that's it. (sigh)
As a result, this list of references is very long....
The history of the CD - The CD family
Compact Disc Story - Kees Schouhamer Immink (Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, May 1998)
Origins and Successors of the Compact Disc: Contributions of Philips to Optical Storage - J.B.H. Peek, J.W.M Bergmans, J. A. M. M. van Haaren, Frank Toolenaar, S.G. Stan (Springer Netherlands, 2009, ISBN: 9781402095535)
https://dutchaudioclassics.nl - Great website cataloguing Philips early work on the CD.
http://cdfs.com/index-cdfs.html
MIDI: The Next Generation – Vic Lennard (Music Technology, May 1992)
A Slow-Motion Revolution – Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian, 2016)
videocide.com/glossary/compact-disc-read-only-memory
https://www.philipscdi.com/history.htm
http://www.icdia.co.uk/faq/index.html
A Tale of TwoStandards: Patent Pools and Innovation in The Optical Disk Drive Industry - Kenneth
Flamm (NBER working papers, 2013)
CD, or Not CD? - Larry White & Elinor Stecker (Popular Photography, Oct 1992)
Kodak, Intel Define Strategy To Bridge Pictures With Digital Imaging - Intel News Release (September 1998)
Compact Disc Video Hits the Streets - Barry Fox (New Scientist, 19th March 1987)
Compact Disc Formats - George Cole (Television, April 1990)
Developments in CD Technology – George Cole (Television, December 1990)
Hardware Pact to Clear Way For Video CD Format - Peter Dean (Billboard, 10th July 1993)
www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/definition/VCD
Pandora’s digital box: From the periphery to the center, or the one of many centers - www.davidbordwell.net (2012)
archive.ph/20120914065916/http:/www.iki.fi/znark/video/svcd/overview
Videodiscs in Healthcare: A Guide to the Industry – (Stewart Publishing, 1988, ISBN; 9780936999081)
Enhanced CDs Get Long-awaited Blue Book Specs - Marilyn A. Gillen (Billboard, 17 June 1995)
Rykodisc is First Label to Release CD Plus - Marilyn A. Gillen (Billboard, 29th July 1995)
New Music Media Faces Numerous Growing Pains - Marilyn A. Gillen (Billboard, 23rd December 1995)
Beyond the X Rating - Logan Decker (Maximum PC, September 2001)
https://www.discogs.com/release/1543940-The-Flaming-Lips-This-Here-Giraffe
Lists of shaped CDs - Discogs
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lnxbbc
The Rainbow Book CD
Varieties
What a
deal the Compact Disc was in electronics in the 1980s can’t be understated. While
PCs and Macs were lumbered with 5-10MB hard drives and floppy disks that can
barely store ONE, here was a portable medium capable of recording 650MB (or
more, with a bit of track squeezing). And all of it can be accessed randomly. It
didn’t take long for the CD to find other applications beyond just audio. Philips
and Sony began work making the CD a computer data format in 1983. Eventually,
in 1985, the first CD-ROM drives were made for PCs (Macs had to wait until
1988). From then on, the CD saw a lot of applications beyond just music. CDs became
the medium of choice for interactive content, such as games. Then CDs became
recordable. CDs that recorded photographs and video came and data capacity
increased. These changes are documented and specified in a set of “Rainbow
Books,” beginning with the Red Book of 1980, which defined the original audio
CD.
Rainbow
Books
Nine
colour-coded “Rainbow Books” were created from 1980 to 2000, to specify
multiple formats of Compact Disc, from the original audio CD (specified by the
Red Book) to Double-density compact discs (specified by the Purple Book).
Red
Book (1980)
Published
by Philips and Sony in 1980, the Red Book set the standards for the Compact Disc
Digital Audio format, released in 1982. It was adopted as an international
standard by the IEC in 1987, becoming IEC 60908.
CD-DA
The Red Book set the
following specifications for the Compact Disc Digital Audio -
·
The audio must be recorded in 2-channels of two-part
16-bit pulse code modulated samples sampled at a frequency of 44,100Hz.
·
Maximum total playing time - 74 minutes
·
Minimum play time of a track - 4 seconds
·
Maximum possible number of tracks – 99
·
Maximum number of index points on a track – 99
·
The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC)
must be used when cataloguing recordings.
·
Data is subdivided into sectors that are 1/75th
of a second in length, each containing 2352 bytes.
·
Each sector is assigned 98 control bytes, which
encode up to 8 subchannels of information – P Q R S T U V and W. Only P and Q
were used in CD-DA.
Using
the other subchannels
The Red
Book was later amended to include a number of audio CD formats with additional
information recorded in the originally unused subchannels R S T U V and W.
CD-Text
Released
in September 1996, CD-Text is an extension to the Red Book audio CD backed by
Sony. These are normal audio CDs with additional text information, such as track
titles, artist names, etc. Text is stored in subchannels R to W, in a format
compatable with the Interactive Text Transmission System (ITTS), a system used
to encode text information on digital media to display on devices playing it.
The
Interactive Text Transmission System is what is in use when a digital audio
device displays the artist’s name and song title of the track that is playing.
ITTS became IEC standard 61866 in 1997, and is used on MiniDisc and digital
radio systems.
CD+G
CD+G
are audio CDs with additional computer graphics. They can play music in any CD
player, but if you connect a TV to a CD+G player, you’ll see graphics on the
screen as the music plays. These graphics are stored in subchannels R to W. The
first CD+G release was the comedy album Eat or Be Eaten, by The Firesign
Theatre, in 1985.
The
graphics stored on CD+Gs are of a 16 colour (4-bit) palette, rendered in 6x12
pixel tiles, covering a screen area of only 288 x 192 pixels, surrounded by a
solid colour border one tile thick. The total raster covered 300 x 216 pixels
of screen area.
Apart
from dedicated karaoke machines, CD+G graphics can be displayed from a number
of consumer devices, including the NEC TurboGrafx-CD, the Philips CD-i, the 3DO
console system, the Sega CD and Saturn, the Commodore Amiga CD32 and CDTV, the
Atari Jaguar CD and the Pioneer LaserActive. Some stand-alone DVD players can display
them.
Amiga
CD32 (1993)
CD+EG/CD+XG
CD+EG is
an improved spec, standardized in 1991. It offers a 256-colour (8-bit) palette
and effects in the same pixel area in a backward compatible manner. But it has
rarely been used commercially.
CD+MIDI
Developed
by Warner New Media, these audio CDs also contain MIDI (Musical Instrument
Digital Interface) information. This allows one to manipulate the music
recorded, having it been played through electronic instruments or allow one to
isolate that guitar solo. The first CD+MIDI was released at the National Association
of Music Merchants (NAMM) winter trade show in 1992.
Yellow
Book (1983)
Philips
and Sony (with some collaboration with Microsoft) began work making the Compact
Disc a medium for interactive content in 1983, publishing the Yellow Book in
October. That work initially led to Philips’ CD-i multimedia platform and the
Green Book. At the same time, Sony and others concentrated on an alternative
CD-based format. Everyone was working on their own system, until Philips, Sony,
Microsoft, Apple, and a few other computer companies decided to meet up in the High
Sierra Hotel and Casino, near Lake Tahoe, California, in November 1985. There,
they decided on a standard filing format for the CD-ROM. After many monthly
meetings, in May 1986, the group published the High Sierra Format system for
CD-ROMs. ECMA International adopted it (with a few modifications) as standard
ECMA-119 in December 1986. ECMA then submitted this to the ISO, which led to
that becoming ISO 9660 in 1988.
The
physical and mechanical properties of the CD-ROM format are specified by
ECMA-130, first published July 1988, and ISO/IEC 10149, first published August
1989.
CD-ROM
The CD-ROM
was announced by Philips and Sony at COMDEX in Las Vegas, in November 1984. Sony
and Denon introduced the CD-ROM at COMDEX in Tokyo in March 1985. The first consumer
CD-ROM drive (the Philips CM100) went on sale in 1986 for $1,495, and came with
a copy of The Electronic Encyclopedia, by Grolier. The CD-ROM became the
medium for interactive media, such as games, for a decade, until DVDs and the
internet surpassed it.
CD-ROM
XA
In
September 1988 Philips, Sony and Microsoft agreed to develop an extended CD-ROM
format, to incorporate audio and video capabilities to CD-i and allow them and
CD-ROMs to be used in each other’s players. The result, CD-ROM XA (eXtended
Architecture), was published in 1989. CD-ROM XA combined the Yellow Book CD-ROM
and Green Book CD-i to bring CD-i audio and video capabilities to the PC.
Mixed
Mode CD
Introduced
by IBM and Philips/DuPont Optical in August 1988, the Mixed Mode CD is both an
audio CD and a CD-ROM on the same disc. They are the predecessor of the CD Extra.
Green
Book (1986)
Although
Philips and Sony created the Yellow Book in 1983, they also worked on another
CD-based format for computer data. Philips and Sony announced the result of
this work, to the surprise to Bill Gates, at Microsoft’s CD-ROM Conference in
Seattle in March 1986 – the Compact Disc Interactive (CD-i). The Green Book,
specifying this CD format was issued in May 1986. Philips eventually did about
90% of its development, resulting in …..
CD-Interactive
The
CD-Interactive platform was a major attempt to introduced interactive
multimedia to the home.
Philips
launched the first CD-i player in the US in October 1991, aiming to become
one’s main entertainment centre, replacing one’s VCR and home computer/game
console. It’s a subject worthy of its own nibble.
Philips CD-i 370 portable video disc player (1995)
CD-i Ready
To help bridge the transition, in 1991 Philips developed the
CD-i Ready format. These audio CDs place the interactive software and data in
the pregap of track 1 (index 0), so normal CD players can ignore it. Regular
CD-i discs stored the data in regular indexes of the first tracks, which meant
regular CD players can interpret them.
Orange
Book (1988)
The
idea of a recordable optical disc had been around since the first LaserDisc
prototypes in the 1970s. Philips and Sony announced the Orange Book standard
for recordable CDs in 1988. It comes in three parts. Part I describes a
magnetic-optical disc system, which later became the MiniDisc. Part II describes
a “Compact Disc Write Once” (CD-WO) and a “hybrid” spec for PhotoCD. Part III
(added in 1996) describes a “Compact Disc Erasable”.
In 1991 a group made up of
Sun Microsystems, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, DEC, Sony, Philips, Meridian
Data, Hewlett-Packard, Ricoh, and Kodak met up in Frankfurt, Germany, to form
the Frankfurt Group. They met up to iron out the details about the Orange Book
standards, and how to make them compatable with previous CD-ROM formats. The
result was released at Microsoft’s Sixth Annual Conference and Exposition on
Multimedia and CD ROM, in San Jose, California, in March 1991.
CD-R
In 1985 materials and electronic component company Taiyo Yuden
started work on the dyes that made the CD-R possible. The resulting discs,
costing about $100 each, were made for use on the first CD burner, the Yamaha PDS100
CD Recordable system, introduced in 1988. Due to it using a $35,000 Yamaha
audio recording drive and thousands of dollars’ worth of additional error
correction circuitry, the whole set up cost $50,000. It was as big as a washing
machine and was 1x speed only. The original purpose for CD-Rs was to make
prototype CDs for pressing plants. But over the next decade, the “CD Burner”
got cheaper, smaller and faster in making recordings, opening up CD authoring
to everyone with a computer.
Philips introduced the first 2x recorder (the CDD 521) in 1991. It
was the size of a stereo receiver and cost $12,000. Sony introduced their 2x recorder
in 1992. JVC introduced their first 2x recorder in 1993, which was also the
first to have the half-height ¼-in form factor that can be installed in PC disc
drive bays. In 1995, Yamaha introduced the first 4x recorder (the CDR100) which
sold for $5,000. In late-1995 Hewlett-Packard sold a 2x recorder (the 4020i) for
less than $1,000.
CD-RW
In early 1996, Sony,
Philips, Ricoh, Yamaha, Hewlett-Packard, and Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
introduced what was originally called the “CD-Erasable.” Ricoh mostly led its
development and introduced the first CD-ReWritable drive (the MP6200S) in May
1996.
Beige
Book (1990)
While developing
the White Book standards, Philips and Kodak created a standardized CD format
dedicated to storing digitized photographs, which combined the CD-ROM XA and
the CD-R’s multisession capabilities. Kodak announced this development in October
1990.
Photo-CD
Introduced
in 1992, the Photo CD was the first consumer use of CD-Rs. These golden CDs
stored up to 100 images in Kodak’s own PhotoYCC encoding format, and stored up
to six different resolutions of each photo. Having multiple versions of the
same photo in different sizes was useful, before photo editing software became
more popular. Photographers can have their photos burned on a disc the same
means they get their photos developed, by sending it to a developer with the
right equipment. Professional photographers liked it, as it was a cheaper means
to get their photos on film digitized at high quality ($3 per photo). But they
later turned against it, due to how it handled colour and its low dynamic
range.
Photo
CDs stored six version of the same photo, with the highest resolution reserved
only for use in the Pro Photo CD master version of the service.
/16
128x192 Thumbnail
/4
256x384 Thumbnail
X1
512x768 TV resolution
X4
1,024x1,563 HDTV resolution
X16 2,048x3072
Print size
X64
4,096x6,144 used by the Pro Photo CD Master service only
Kodak
originally sold the Photo CD with players that can be connected to a TV to
display the photos. But most used their computer CD drives and software to do
that instead. The first Photo CD players were released in August 1992. The
Kodak PCD 870 was the more-pricy ($549) fully-featured Photo CD compatable
player sold at launch. Compared the more basic ($449) PCD 270, the 870 can
display images in any order, rotate them and zoom in on details. It also plays
audio CDs too.
Five
Photo CD Flavours
The Photo CD specifications
included five categories of images that can be stored on them –
·
Medical images – X-rays and body scanner imagry.
·
Pro – For professional photographers, which
supports most film sizes.
·
Catalog – Can store up to 6,000 images within a
linked environment, ideal for interactive catalogues.
·
Portfolio II – Replaced an earlier Portfolio
standard, which offered tools to create audio-visual presentations.
·
Master – The disc people got when they sent in
their film to be developed.
Picture
CD
As
digital photography took off in the 1990s, Kodak’s proprietary Photo CD was
proving unpopular. In September 1998 Kodak and Intel unveiled the more
inclusive Picture CD and began test marketing it in Indianapolis and Salt Lake
City. For less than $10, people still using film can drop off their film to a
lab and have their photos digitized as high-resolution jpegs on a Picture CD. It
proved a huge success, beyond Kodak’s expectations, that the they decided to
roll out the service across the whole US in mid-1999. It was a neat stepping
stone service for those who were making the then still expensive transition to
digital. But, as digital camera prices fell, the need for the service
decreased.
A Picture
CD stores a whole roll of film’s photos as 2536x1024 jpeg images, large enough
for 8x10 prints.
White
Book (1993)
They
were a number of attempts to put video on a CD. So many that they are a subject
for a separate nibble. White book was published by JVC and Philips in March
1993. It set out the standards for CDs that can store audio, images and video.
The resulting disc formats (based on CD-I and CD-ROM XA) were a bridge between
LaserDisc and DVD.
Video
CD
The Video CD was first
announced by Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC during the 4th Multimedia
Conference in London, UK, in June 1993. They were a number of different
versions of Video-CD specified in the White Book.
·
Karaoke-CD 1.0 – Defined by Philips and JVC in
1992 to used mainly in Japanese karaoke applications. It only had basic video
features.
·
Video-CD 1.1 – Defined by Sony, Philips, Matsushita,
and JVC, this fully-fleshed out version was introduced in 1993. These discs
were just the video, with a limited ability to skip chapters. No interactive
menus at all.
·
Video-CD 2.0 – Published in July 1994, and introduced
in April 1995 by Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC, this version had more sophisticated
features, like limited interactive menus, high resolution MPEG still image
support, slide show options and the possible inclusion of CD-Audio tracks on
the disc.
·
VCD-ROM – Introduced in 1997, these discs were a
VCD/CD-ROM hybrid.
·
VCD-Internet – Introduced in 1997, this allowed
videos to link to internet data.
An
original Video-CD disc can store up to 74 minutes of MPEG-1 video, with MPEG-1
Layer 2 audio sampled at 44,100Hz, at a resolution of 352x240 pixels (NTSC), or
352x 288 (PAL). Later refinement squeezed 80 minutes of video. At the time of
its introduction, most computers needed extra hardware to decompress and
display MPEG video without buffering.
Matsushita
launched the first dedicated consumer Video CD player, the Panasonic SC-VC 10,
in April 1994.
Super
Video CD
In the late-1990s the Chinese
decided to develop an alternative video disc format to DVD, mostly due to
concerns about restrictions and royalties, due to DVD been developed outside of
China. It was hoped that the development of SVCD would help drive down the costs
of DVD players and the formats royalties. They were three independent attempts
at it.
·
C-Cube Microsystems (a maker of chips for Video
CD players) was first, completing the specs for the China Video Disc (CVD) in
1997.
·
The government-backed China Recording Standards
Committee, under direction from the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry,
developed the Super video CD (SVCD), with support from ESS Technology.
·
The Video CD Consortium (the original creators
of the Video CD) was late, creating the High-Quality Video CD (HQ-VCD).
The Chinese Ministry of
Information and the Video CD Consortium later agreed to join forces, adding
features from the HQ-VCD into the SVCD. But before that happened, the specs for
SVCD were released in July 1998, and 600,000 CVD players had already been made.
A compromise was made. The SVCD and CVD standards were combined to create the
Chaoji (“Super”) VCD in November 1998, becoming China’s “official” next-gen
video disc standard. The SVCD format was standardized as IEC 62107 in July 2000.
Using MPEG-2 compression, the video on SVCDs is double the resolution of VCDs (480x480
(NTSC), 480x576 (PAL)), but to achieve this, their record time is halved (35
minutes per CD). But they do support 5.1 surround sound and multiple languages.
CD-i
Bridge
This
format is a CD-ROM XA with additional CD-I specs, which bridges CD-ROM and
CD-i. This format, defined in the White Book, is the base of Video CDs and
Photo CDs.
Blue
Book (1995)
A
problem with mixed mode CDs was that when a regular audio-only CD player played
a track containing data, it’ll produce static that could damage speakers and,
possibly, the listener’s hearing. Various manufacturers tried addressing this
problem in a number of different confusing ways, many of which still allowed the
data tracks to be played accidently. Philips, Sony, Apple, and Microsoft
finally sorted out this mess (with some input from the Recording Industry
Association of America) with the Blue Book, published in June 1995.
CD-Plus/Enhanced
Music CD/CD Extra
These
are audio CDs with additional multimedia content. Such CDs had been released
before, but (in many of them) the multimedia part was recorded on track that
had to be skipped manually. The Blue Book created a format that encoded the
data in such a way a normal CD player can skip the data tracks automatically,
like they’re not there. CDs following the Blue Book standards first appeared in
July 1995.
The
first Blue Book “CD Plus” was the Sugar album Besides, released July 1995.
The extra content was a QuickTime video of the music video for single “Gee
Angel.” The packaging has no mention of its extra content. It was publicized by
word-and-mouth only. Why? Because, according to Lars Murray, director of
special projects for record label Rykodisc, (to Billboard 29th
July 1995) “We don’t want to promise something that we can’t necessarily
deliver. Especially, it’s just a pure bonus for those who have the proper hardware
and drivers to access it, and it’s not penalizing al all those who don’t.”
Scarlet
Book (1999)
As
technology and our knowledge of our hearing improved, some thought the 16-bit 44,100Hz
sound recorded on CDs no longer cut it. It turns out sound frequencies above 20,000Hz
are important for hearing and the sample rate used on CDs has trouble producing
a good “sound stage” for accurate stereo reproduction. Our ears pick up minute
differences in timing between the left and right speaker. So, Philips and Sony
thought of creating a better CD. An improved CD, taking advantage in advances
in technology. The Scarlet Book, specifying this “Super Audio CD,” was
published in March 1999.
Super
Audio CD
Launched
in May 1999, the Super Audio CD is a more advanced form of CD. It’s basically a
DVD that contains only ultra-high-quality audio, which has advanced copy
protection. Philips and Sony developed a new system to encode this audio, which
they called Direct Stream Digital. This method is believed to create the most
accurate representation of sound ever achieved with digital technology. A SA-CD
can (without using Direct Stream Transfer (DST – a lossless data compression
method) store up to 110 minutes of audio, and up to six audio channels are
possible, enabling SA-CDs to contain surround sound. Few saw the point of
SA-CDs. Most were happy with regular CDs. However, it did find a place in the
audiophile-sphere. The bestselling music genre sold on SA-CDs is classical
music, which says everything.
Anatomy
of a Super Audio CD
SA-CDs
come in three varieties -
Single Layer discs just have one
high density layer that can store up to 4.7GB of data. Most early SA-CDs were
single-layered.
Dual Layer discs have two high density layers, which, in
total, can store up to 8.5 GB of data. They are rare, almost only used for very
long pieces of classical music.
Hybrid
discs are basically a SA-CD and a regular CD sandwiched together, making it
backwards compatable with normal CD players. Most SA-CDs are hybrids.
In
hybrid SA-CDs, the layer containing the super audio is partly reflective. It is
placed in front of the regular CD layer from the laser. If placed in a regular
CD player, its 780 nm laser will shine through the high-density layer, reading
the disc like it’s a regular CD. SA-CD and DVD players use a shorter wavelength
laser (650nm), which can be reflected by the high-density layer.
The
first SA-CD player, the 26kg (57 lb) Sony SCD-1, retailed for about $5,000 in
1999. It can play two-channel SA-CDs and regular CDs, and nothing else. A
number of players were made by multiple manufacturers. Sony even made in-car SA-CD
players. Some high-end Blu-ray players can also play SA-CDs, including the
first two generations of the PlayStation 3.
The
audio on SA-CDs is sampled 2,822.400 times a second (64 times that on regular
CDs). But they are not recorded as 16-bit binary numbered values. Their encoded
as a 1-bit stream that records the density of the sound wave, instead of its
loudness.
Purple
Book (2000)
Work on
squeezing more storage space on the Compact Disc continued. In 2000 Sony published
the Purple Book, covering the specs for Double Density CDs.
Double
Density CDs
Developed
by Sony, this 12-cm CD has narrower spaces between tracks (1,100 nm) and shorter
pits (minimum length 623 nm) allowing it to store up to 1.3 GB of data. Launched
in April 2001, only one DDCD recorder was ever made – the Sony CRX200E. Despite
its initial price ($249 and $2-3 per blank disc) been lower than DVD-RW drives
and discs at the time ($1000 and $10 per blank disc), few saw the point of
DDCDs. DVDs can store a lot more than a DDCD, and became cheaper over time.
DualDisc
Introduced
by the record companies Sony BMG, EMI, Universal Music, and Warner Music in
October 2004, this double-sided disc is a DVD and an audio CD sandwiched
together. Slightly thicker than normal CDs and DVDs, one side is a fully
compliant DVD, while the other side is an “almost” CD (it doesn’t fully comply
with Red Book standards).
The
first DualDisc sold was Simple Plan’s Still Not Getting Any…, released in
October 2004.
Small and non-round CDs
The majority
of CDs are 12cm diameter round discs. But some were made that were smaller or
non-round in shape. This is possible because CDs are read from inside then out,
so after recording a small bit of information, a CD can be cut into any shape.
However, it does limit what sort of CD player can play them.
Mini CDs
In 1987 the
8cm diameter Mini CD single was introduced. The idea was to emulate the 7-in
single records that were sold along with 12-in LPs in the days of vinyl. They
have the capacity to record up to 24 minutes of audio, or 210MB of data. But
most were released with two music tracks, in the same tradition as the 45. The
idea of releasing singles on Mini CDs died out in the west in the early-1990s,
but continued on until the 2000s in Japan. Later on, it was mostly used to
distribute software, such as the drivers for various computer peripherals.
Mini CD Machines
Some portable
devices were made that used Mini CDs as their main storage medium (when flash
memory was still expensive), such as a few small Mini CD MP3 players and
digital cameras.
In 1988
Sony released the Discman D-88 – a pocket-size CD player that is smaller than a
regular CD, designed mainly to play Mini CDs. It is 94.5 x 32.9 x 99 mm (3.7 x
1.3 x 3.9 in) big.
Sony Mavica
MVC-CD1000 (2000)
In 2004
Sony released the MCS1 PhotoVault. It was a mini CD burner designed to burn
photos stored on memory stick, USB flash drives, or straight from digital
camera onto a mini CD “PC free.”
The MP3
file format increased how much music could be recorded on a Mini CD, leading to
a number of mini CD players sold as MP3 players. A low density Mini-CD-R could
store unto 156MB, or about 3 hours of MP3 files.
Compaq iPAQ
Personal Mini-CD Player PM-1 (2001)
Memorex
MPD8081 Pocket Player (2002)
Imation
RipGO! Portable Mini CD burner (2002)
Other Shapes
In 1996 The Flaming Lips released special edition of their single ‘This Here Giraffe’ on a star-shaped CD. It claims to be “The world's first ever shaped CD.” They are many other shaped CDs out there.
CD Cards
In 1997 Dean
Procter of internet company Imaginet was offering “C-Cards” - business card
shaped CD-ROMs that can contain full screen hi-fi stereo video on almost any
PC.
In 1999 Duncan
MacKinnon of Linuxcare thought of a novel way to distribute software at a trade
show – a business card that is also a CD containing their software. The
resulting “Bootable Business Cards” were given away at LinuxWorld Conference
and Expo. These initial 10,000 discs, cut into the standard shape of a business
card, contained 50MB of data.
Since then, a number of artists have released music on such cards.
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