Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium Diepeveen built an error-correcting coder-decoder that was delivered in the summer of 1978. The decoder was included in the CD prototype player that was presented to the international press. To commemorate this breakthrough, Philips received an IEEE Milestone Award on March 6, 2009. This breakthrough was also appreciated by Sony and they started a cooperation with Philips that resulted in June 1980 in a common CD system standard. Philips as a whole took a turn for the worse and by the end of the 1980s bankruptcy seemed a very real possibility. Under research director Kees Bulthuis the position of long-term
Stephen Philips Stephen Philips Stephen Philips is an ambient drone musician who has releases on such major ambient labels as Hypnos, Blue Water Records, Gears of Sand, and his own record label, Dark Duck Records. Philips has been producing and releasing music since 1988 on his own label as well as other indie ambient labels, and also collaborating with many other ambient artists such as Austere, Rigel Orionis, IXOHOXI, Numina, Ben Fleury-Steiner, Isomorph, Palancar, and others. He is also the major contributor to his own Drone Download Project series of online releases which are then put together as CD compilations at the