Rainbow Books

The Rainbow Books are a collection of CD format specifications.

Red Book (1980)

  • CD-DA (Digital Audio) – standardized as IEC 60908
    • CD-Text—a 1996 extension to CD-DA
    • CD-MIDI—part of the original red-book standard
    • CD+G (plus Graphics) – karaoke

Green Book (1986)

Yellow Book (1988)

  • CD-ROM (Read-Only Memory) – standardized as ECMA-130 and ISO/IEC 10149
    • CD-ROM XA (eXtended Architecture) – a 1991 extension of CD-ROM

Orange Book (1990)

Orange is a reference to the fact that red and yellow mix to orange. This correlates with the fact that CD-R and CD-RW are capable of audio ("Red") and data ("Yellow"); although other colors (other CD standards) that do not mix are capable of being burned onto the physical medium. Orange Book also introduced the standard for multisession writing.

  • CD-MO (Magneto-Optical)
  • CD-R (Recordable) alias CD-WO (Write Once) alias CD-WORM (Write Once, Read Many) – partially standardized as ECMA-394
  • CD-RW (ReWritable) alias CD-E (Eraseable) – partially standardized as ECMA-395

Beige Book (1992)

White Book (1993)

Blue Book (1995)

Scarlet Book (1999)

Scarlet color of this book is a reference to the Red Book, which defines original CDDA.

Purple Book (2000)

  • DDCD (Double Density)

See also

  • ISO 9660, a 1986 filesystem standard used in conjunction with CD-ROM formats.
  • Orange-Book-Standard, a decision named after the Compact Disc standard, issued in 2009 by the German Federal Court of Justice on the interaction between patent law and standards
  • Philips CD Specifications
  • "The Great Books". The World of CDs and DVDs. ThinkQuest. Archived from the original on 2012-12-09. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
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