Shaped CD
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A shaped CD is a non-circular compact disc. Examples include CDs in the shape of a business card, a hockey rink, a star, a map of a country, and more. These disks are usually made for marketing purposes and are properly read by most CD-ROM drives (and audio CD players, although custom-shaped CDs tend to contain data). Many companies exist that sell CDs with custom shapes.
Unlike Mini CDs, which are smaller, but still circular versions of normal CDs, custom CDs can be any number of shapes, even more complicated shapes like gears with dozens of teeth, but are generally smooth and with rounded edges, such as ovals, rounded rectangles. A logo can be printed on a shaped CD, in the same way common audio CDs and CD-ROMs are labeled.
[edit] Compatibility
Shaped CDs are not compatible with all CD players — they will work with most machines in which the disc is inserted by manually clipping it onto a central spindle (the mechanism used in virtually all portable CD players), but may not work in drives which load the disc from a tray, or those which pull the disc into a slot. They can even get stuck in these players.
[edit] Assymmetric discs
Irregularly shaped, non-rotationally symmetric discs with an offset center of mass may also cause damaging vibration if played in computer CD drives, which can operate at a much higher rotational velocity than stand-alone audio CD players. Some irregularly shaped discs will work with tray loading CD drives if they include a circular ridge on their underside which centers them on the part of the tray designed to hold 80 mm CDs, if the tray has such a feature.
