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
Philips Records the Philips Recording Center in Baarn, Netherlands, and formed Polyhymnia International (a recording and mastering company) and Pentatone Records (which specializes in SACD releases). Many of the Philips classical recordings have been reissued on the Eloquence label. Universal also released a "Philips 50" series marking the 50th anniversary of Philips Records in the early 2000s; some of those CDs are still in print. Pentatone has released Philips Quadraphonic sound recordings from the early and mid-1970s in 4-channel SACD format, as their RQR Series. Philips' classical catalog was issued on CD under the headings "Digital Classics", "Legendary Classics" and "Silver Line