Black CDs

Factual Questions
1

I generally know how a CD works but lately I’ve been seeing CDs that are black on the data surface. I have several questions about this.

  1. Why would a company make a black CD? Just to be different or is there some advantage?
  2. Is it read differently than a normal CD?
  3. I almost swear I’ve seen other colour CDs. Has anyone else seen them?

Personally, I think all CDs should be black so people will stop lining the bottom of their windshields with them for decoration.

2

The color of the CD makes no difference. The black ones are just to make them look more like records (remember records?). Cheaper CDRS are usually blue, and someone told me not to use them cause their quality is lower than silver. I don’t know if this is true.

Records did come in other colors. Some of these are now worth beaucoup bucks.

3

Someone in the industry told me that (apart from aesthetics) it was to do with the fact that each manufacturer uses a different dye and that every time a company develops a dye, they patent it - the next company that comes along has to either obtain a license to use pre-existing dyes or develop a new one (with similar properties) for their own use.

4

i used to use those black ones. they’re nothing different, really - my friend claims they’re higher quality. but if the data surface is gold it’s probably high quality. there’s nothign special about them, as far as i know

5

I’ve got one in front of me right now. The liner in the cd case says that its a “Carbon CD” and goes on to explain the following:

It also has a couple of graphs of a “Carbon CD” vs. regular CD’s that shows how it is superior to them in terms of UV protection and block error rates.

I guess you should also only clean them with snake oil…

6

The old Playstation discs are black as well. Not quite sure why they were, but with the switch of the Playstation 2 over to almost all DVD, they don’t do that anymore.

7

I had read somewhere that the PS1 disks were black as a form of copy protection, which would prevent people from copying them with their computers.

8
9

The dark blue disca are far superior to the silver/greenish ones. The have an extra layer inside that helps the laser read the disc while on most cheaper silvery/green disks will aloow the laser to slip and mis-read.

Take one of those cheap disks and hold it right up to your eye. Sometimes you can actually see thru them!

10

The original PS discs were black not as a form of copy protection, but to keep them from being played on pirated machines, IIRC.

11

The black plastic of the PS1 discs had nothing to do with copy protection… they work just fine in a computer CD-ROM drive. It does help distinguish official PlayStation discs from silver Hong Kong mass-pirated copies, though.

12

CD players use infrared lasers to read, the black CDs are actually very dark red, and transparent to infrared wavelengths; they probably block UV light that should protect the data, as Ill Logik said.

13
      • Re: last four posts-- No, No, Maybe, and No.
        From CDRFaq.org-
        “The reason why there are multiple formulations is that the materials and process for each are patented. If a new vendor wants to get into the CD-R market, they have to come up with a new combination of materials that conforms to the Orange Book specifications.”

http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-1
The next section points out how different CD-recorders and players vary widely in how well they will work with any substrate/dye type or brand of CD-R disc. No disc type has been proven to be superior for all CD recorders and players.
Furthermore:
“One final comment: while there are clearly defined standards for CD-R media, there are no such standards for CD and CD-ROM drives – other than that they be able to read CDs. It is possible for media to be within allowed tolerances, but be unreadable by a CD-ROM drive that can handle pressed discs without trouble.”
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-2
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