CD-E: Call It Erasable, Call It Rewritable, But Will It Fly?

This article was the first serious public look at the technical aspects of and market potential for CD-ReWritable (CD-RW). Known during its development as CD-Erasable (CD-E), CD-RW is an interesting chapter in the history of optical storage and, fanciful expectations of its promoters aside, continues to endure, long outliving most of its contemporaries.

DVD: A Problem Ignored

Now just a darned minute! Wasn’t the new high-density DVD/DVD-ROM specification supposed to be backwards compatible? Wasn’t it implied that DVD drives could play existing CD-Recordable discs?