Huge Half-Life discovery found from a decades-old CD sitting in a storage unit

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Huge Half-Life discovery found from a decades-old CD sitting in a storage unit
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It wasn't the colour, you would burn little bubbles into the disk. The bubbles would deflect a laser and flat parts would not. This would give the 0 or 1 bits.

There were CD- and CD+ versions. I don't know which is which but one would create a divot, and the other would create a bubble. Either way the laser is diverted away from the sensor.

Ah, that's what it was! I always thought it was just a different color for 0 and 1, today I learned! That makes more sense when I think about it.

CD - red laser

BlueRay - blue laser.. shorter wavelength --> more data on same size disk

and inbetween there was DL - dual layer
light scribe - could etch a picture on the top of the cd
and RW - rewriteable CDs

(CD is short for compact disc)

CDs like laserdiscs before them are read with an infrared laser.

DVDs use a red laser, and Blu-ray does indeed use a blue-violet laser. The smaller wavelengths, plus the ability to do multiple layers, are indeed how they cram more data more densely onto a disc of nearly identical size.

light scribe

I remember having one, but I never actually etched a picture onto the CD, it never seemed worth doing.