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