Blue Book (CD standard) Blue Book (CD standard) The Blue Book is a compact disc standard developed in 1995 by Philips and Sony. It defines the Enhanced Music CD format (E-CD, also known as CD-Extra, CD-Plus and CD+), which combines audio tracks and data tracks on the same disc. The format was created as a way to solve the problem of mixed mode CDs, which were not properly supported by many CD players. The standard is not freely available and must be licensed from Philips. E-CDs are created through the "stamped multisession" technology, which creates two sessions on a disc. The first session of
Philips was formed in the US with the name Philips Electronics North America Corp. In 1991-1992, Philips along with their subsidiary Magnavox, released the Philips CD-i, a combined CD player and home video game console. It sold one million units and was discontinued in 1998 after being heavily criticized amongst the gaming community. In 1997, the company officers decided to move the headquarters from Eindhoven to Amsterdam along with the corporate name change to Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., the latter of which was finalized on 16 March 1998. The move of the headquarters to Amsterdam was completed in 2001. Initially, the