When we think of CD’s and DVD’s we are right to believe they have been around for a while. In fact the concept of an optical disc dates back to the 1970’s when both Philips and Sony were working on optical disc projects, which Philips had rather limited commercial sucess, with the Laserdisc system.

Moving on from their respective research and development projects the two companies formed a task force, which a year after its conception produced “The Red Book”-the technical document which defines the CD-Audio format.

The various types of discs that we are now familiar with (e.g. CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW etc ) are all newer derivatives of the initial disc concept, which was principally designed to be a new audio format-something it has achieved with un-rivalled success. Dire Straits album, Brothers in Arms from 1985 was the first million selling album in this exciting new format.

In the next article I will attempt to detail some of “The Red Book” standards, and how they are relavant to clients of duplication and printing companies such as ours. Some of the content is a little bit techie but I will attempt to keep the content relevant.

Until next time