Green Book (CD standard) Green Book (CD standard) The "Green Book", formally known as the "CD-i Full Functional Specification", is a CD standard announced in 1986 by Philips and Sony that defines the format for interactive, multimedia compact discs designed for CD-i players. The standard was originally not freely available and had to be licensed from Philips. However, the 1994 version of the standard was eventually made available free by Philips. CD-i discs conform to the "Red Book" specification of audio CDs (CD-DA). Tracks on a CD-i's program area can be CD-DA tracks or CD-i tracks, but the first track must always be a
Philips CD-i The CD-i was abandoned by 1996 and was a commercial failure, estimated to have lost Philips as much as one US billion dollars in the American market. Philips at first marketed CD-i as a family entertainment product, and avoided mentioning video games to not compete against game consoles. Early software releases focused heavily on educational, music, and self-improvement titles, with only a few games, many of them adaptations of board games such as "Connect Four". However, the system was handily beaten in the market for multimedia devices by cheap low-end PCs, and the games were the best-selling software. By 1993