[LINK] History of the CD Re: creatives angry about copyrestricted DVDs

[Adrian Chadd]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:

> Then a few years later computer documentation was being distributed on CDROM. I 
> am still amazed by the interoperability of the CD format. And today photographs 
> are being exchanged and stored on CD.

Don't be. As long as things are written in the legacy format, things work fine.
Then it depends on which extensions you want/need. Then it depends if somehow
the DVD like format (UDF?) is used instead of cd9660. Oh, wait a sec, then
the windows joliet format. I hear Amiga and apple have extensions to the cd9660
format which are mostly backwards compatible too, but I never got to deal with
those.

Then there's the physical stuff - ever tried playing a CD-R on an older CD player?
Results are hit and miss. Heck, they're hit and miss reading data CDs thanks to
the tolerance variants in burners and players.

Also, ever wonder why CDs once stored 650ish meg, and now they store more like 700ish
meg, and how audio CDs now store more? :)

Finally, please don't get me started on various photo booth type companies which
forget to do useful things like -finish- the burn cycle correctly so your CD-R can
be read by various OSes, rather than just the XP install they tested on. :)

I think you're probably clouded by the fact that CD market penetration is still
so high, companies have a vested interest in making their current generation stuff
handle all the older variants in format and media, versus being forward
compatible (ie, sticking 100% to the spec and testing on older devices.)

2c, thanking ${DIETY} he doesn't have to deal with this anymore,



Adrian