Rainbow Books

The 'Rainbow Books' is name for the set of all specifications for the Compact Disc format that were originally developed by Royal Philips and Sony Corporation. Beginning with the 'Red Book' standard in 1980 for CD-DACompact Disc Digital Audio (named after the red cover in which it was bound), other CD standards received names:

• Red Book (CD-DA)
  • Extensions: CD-GCompact Disc Graphics, CD-EGCompact Disc Extended Graphics, CD-MIDICompact Disc MIDI, CD-TEXT
• Yellow Book (CD-ROM)
  • Extensions: CD-ROM XACompact Disc Read Only Memory eXtended Architecture
• Green Book (CD-I)
  • Extensions: CD-I ReadyCompact Disc Interactive Ready
• Orange Book (CD-MO / CD-RCompact Disc Recordable / CD-RW)
  • Extensions: CD-RCompact Disc Recordable Multi Speed, CD-RWCompact Disc ReWritable High Speed, CD-RWCompact Disc ReWritable Ultra Speed
• White Book (CD Bridge)
  • Extensions: Photo CDPhoto Compact Disc, Karaoke CDKaraoke Compact Disc, Video CD, Super Video CD
• Blue Book (CD Extra / CD Plus / Enhanced Music CD)
• Scarlet Book (SACD)
• Purple Book (DDCD)

Note that some other specifications have been given "book" names that were never named as such by Philips or Sony. For example it is common to see Photo CDPhoto Compact Disc referred to as the "Beige Book" but it was never named this way by Philips or Kodak (Photo CD Version 0.9 had a yellow cover). It is more accurate to say that Photo CDPhoto Compact Disc is an extension/application of the White Book, as as the case with VCDVideo Compact Disc, SVCDSuper Video Compact Disc, and Karaoke CDKaraoke Compact Disc. Other specifications integral to the CD family such as MultisessionMultisession Compact Disc CD and ISO 9660 are not given "book" names either.