Eli5: why were playstation 1 CD’s black and playstation 2 CD’s blue, instead of looking like regular CD’s? How did that work with manufacturing and reading the disc, and why were they designed like that?

Question

Eli5: why were playstation 1 CD’s black and playstation 2 CD’s blue, instead of looking like regular CD’s? How did that work with manufacturing and reading the disc, and why were they designed like that?

In: Technology

Answer 1

*Why?* So that they would stand-out from the majority of consumer CDs and DVDs. I’ve seen the occasional audio CD with the read-side black as well, but it wasn’t common. The read-side being black or blue didn’t interfere with piracy attempts or anything like that, and there’s no way Sony would have thought otherwise since PlayStation discs with redbook audio can be read in a standard CD player there was obviously no data obfuscation employed at that level.