For the CD timelime, see:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/hi.../timeline.html

According to this, CD prototypes were demonstrated in 1977, and the
international CD standards group kicked off in 1978, and Philips was
pushing an 11.5 cm format disk from the start. Once Sony concurred
with Philips, there was no one left to argue. This gives a data point
of 5 years prior to 1982 (which means Philips had CD prototypes in the
lab prior to 1977 - maybe not exact replicas of the eventual CD, but
surely at least 80% of the way there).

As to SACD, take a look at the following AES newsletter from July 1997:

http://www.aessf.org/newsletters/july97.pdf

It indicates that Sony and Philips were initially positioning the
'SACD' format for archival storage (which they announced as a product
in 1996) rather than consumer use. In 1997, they made the decision to
reposition to this for consumer audio use. If, as in the CD example
above, one assumes the initial prototypes were available 5 year prior
to 1996, the year 1991 doesn't look so far fetched. As to whether a
disk from 1991 could play on today's SACD players, that may be
doubtful, since the gist of this newsletter article is that they were
trying to achieve compatibility with CD and DVD players, so the
media's physical construction is likely different.

Terry

Olivier Bruchez wrote:

Terry Zagar wrote in message news:0VFTa.116433$OZ2.23118@rwcrnsc54...
The folks at Philips research labs, at least in times gone past, were
pretty advanced so I wouldn't discount this note. I would further
venture that the folks at Philips even had prototype flat panel TV
monitors in the labs in the 1980's (if not before) as well. There's
usually more than a few years between inventing a technology (and its
component parts) and getting it into a form were it is
manufacture-able, distributable, and supportable on a large scale with
a form and price factor attractive to the targeted market. And
clearly, Philips would want to time the introduction of new technology
with the expiration of their older CD patents so that they could
maximize payback timeframes and minimize competition amongst their
intellectual properties.

Ok. But I think there's a difference between having SACD *prototypes*
a few years before 1999 and actually *selling* SACD players and SACDs
*eight* years before they were officially commercialized. That's what
I find hard to believe.

Olivier