Super Audio CD Super Audio CD Super Audio CD (SACD) is a read-only optical disc for audio storage, introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics, and intended to be the successor to their Compact Disc (CD) format. While the SACD format can offer more channels (e.g. surround sound), and a longer playing time than CD, research published in 2007 found no significant difference in audio quality between SACD and standard CD at ordinary volume levels. Having made little impact in the consumer audio market, by 2007, SACD was deemed to be a failure by the press. A small
Philips CD-i that though Philips had a large booth at the 1995 Electronic Entertainment Expo, there was no CD-i hardware or software on display. "Next Generation" scored the console one out of five stars. After its discontinuation, retrospectively, the CD-i was overwhelmingly panned by critics who blasted its graphics, games, and controls. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates admitted that initially he "was worried" about the CD-i due to Philips's heavy support for the device and its two-pronged attack on both the games console and PC markets, but that in retrospect "It was a device that kind of basically got caught in the middle.