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
Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers album was later released on CD having been remastered and expanded in 1998. The sleeve notes were written by Brian Mulligan, the then press officer for Philips Records, with photography by Terence Donovan. In the USA the album was released on Smash Records as Introducing the Walker Brothers. This alternate version shifted the running order around and replaced "Lonely Winds", "Girl I Lost in the Rain", "First Love Never Dies", and "Tell the Truth" with the singles "Love Her", "My Ship Is Coming In" and "Pretty Girls Everywhere", along with the latter's B-side "Doin' the Jerk". The group can be