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)

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.
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.
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