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 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