Compact Disc
Compact Disc
The closely spaced tracks on the readable
surface of a Compact Disc cause light to diffract
into a full visible color spectrum
Media type Optical disc
Encoding
Various
Capacity
Typically up to 700 MB (up to 80
minutes audio)
Read
mechanism
780 nm wavelength
semiconductor laser
Developed
by
Philips Sony
Usage
Audio and data storage
Optical disc authoring
• Optical disc
• Optical disc drive
• Optical disc authoring
• Authoring software
• Recording technologies
• Recording modes
• Packet writing
Optical media types
• Blu-ray Disc (BD): BD-R, BD-RE
• DVD: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-R DL, DVD+R
DL, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW DL,
DVD+RW DL, DVD-RW2, DVD-RAM, DVD-D,
HVD
• Compact Disc (CD): Red Book, CD-ROM,
CD-R, CD-RW, 5.1 Music Disc, SACD,
PhotoCD, CD Video (CDV), Video CD (VCD),
SVCD, CD+G, CD-Text, CD-ROM XA, CD-i
• Universal Media Disc (UMD)
• Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD)
Discontinued Optical Disc Formats
Standards
• Rainbow Books
• File systems
• ISO 9660
• Joliet
• Rock Ridge
• El Torito
• Apple ISO 9660 Extensions
• Universal Disk Format (UDF)
• Mount Rainier
Further reading
• History of optical storage media
• High definition optical disc format war
A Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an
optical disc used to store digital data, origin-
ally developed for storing digital audio. The
CD, available on the market since October
1982, remains the standard physical medium
for sale of commercial audio recordings to
the present day.
Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm
and can hold up to 80 minutes of audio
(700 MB of data). The Mini CD has various
diameters ranging from 60 to 80 mm; they
are sometimes used for CD singles or device
drivers, storing up to 24 minutes of audio.
The technology was later adapted and ex-
panded to include data storage CD-ROM,
write-once audio and data storage CD-R, re-
writable media CD-RW, Super Audio CD
(SACD), Video Compact Discs (VCD), Super
Video Compact Discs
(SVCD), PhotoCD,
PictureCD, CD-i, and Enhanced CD.
CD-ROMs and CD-Rs remain widely used
technologies in the