Rainbow Books

The Rainbow Books are a collection of CD format specifications, generally written and published by the companies involved in their development, including Philips, Sony, Matsushita and JVC, among others.
A number of these specifications have been officially adopted by established standards bodies, including the ISO, IEC, and ECMA.

''Red Book'' (1980)

CD-DA – originally published by Philips and Sony in September 19, 1980, it was later standardized as IEC 60908:1987 and later IEC 60908:1999.
*CD-Text – a 1996 extension to CD-DA
*CD-MIDI – part of the original Red Book standard
*CD+G – an extension of the Red Book specifications used mainly for karaoke
**CD+EG – an extension of CD+G

''Yellow Book'' (1983)

CD-ROM – originally developed by Philips and Sony, it was standardized as ISO/IEC 10149 in 1988 and ECMA-130 in 1989
*CD-ROM XA – a 1991 extension of CD-ROM, developed by Philips and Sony

''Green Book'' (1986)

CD-i – standard developed and published by Philips.

''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 and data ; although other colors that do not mix are capable of being burned onto the physical medium. Orange Book also introduced the standard for multisession writing.

CD-MO
CD-R alias CD-WO alias CD-WORM – originally developed by Sony and Philips, it was partially standardized as ECMA-394.
CD-RW alias CD-E – originally developed by Philips, Sony and Ricoh, it was partially standardized as ECMA-395.

''Beige Book'' (1992)

Photo CD — proprietary standard jointly developed by Philips and Eastman Kodak; never released to the public

''White Book'' (1993)

The White Book refers to a standard of compact disc that stores pictures and video.

CD-i Bridge - a bridge format between CD-ROM XA and the Green Book CD-i, which is the base format for Video CDs, Super Video CDs and Photo CDs.
VCD – a standard jointly developed and published by JVC, Matsushita, Philips and Sony.
*SVCD – a 1998 extension of VCD, standardized as IEC 62107 in 2000.

''Blue Book'' (1995)

The Blue Book is a compact disc standard that defines the Enhanced Music CD format, which combines audio tracks and data tracks on the same disc.

E-CD/CD+/CD Extra – a standard jointly developed and published by Microsoft, Philips and Sony

''Scarlet Book'' (1999)

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

SACD – a standard jointly developed and published by Philips and Sony

''Purple Book'' (2000)

A standard developed by Philips and Sony in the late 1990s, with over 1 GB in capacity and recordable/re-recordable capabilities.

DDCD – divided in three separate specifications:
*DD-ROM
*DD-R
*DD-RW