Is this the END of DAYS for the high end CD player

foolishness Dave??. i think you nailed it!

If it is not, it is about to go thru a huge change. It's going to be a while yet, but universal disc players and high res disc players 'IF' disc players do prevail, will be the norm soon enough.... IMHO.

Mainstream music playback in the digital domain is definitely headed for the Hard drive based outfit.

Blame the iPod boys and girls. or Steve Jobs.

Staying out of the server based music game because changes come so frequently, is the poorest of excuses, though I've used it myself. The problem with it is this... if one truly believes such is the case in truth... they'll never get into the game itself, for it's not stopping anytime soon.

Ya just gotta jump in! Somewhere! Waiting for the digital dust to settle is like uh, waiting for Hell itself to freeze over so you can plan a ski trip!

Playstation, X box, receivers, DVD players, etc., have all been setting us up to learn menus and now personal confusers are showing us just how easy it is to acquire, facilitate, manage, and use remarkably large libraries at our fingertips! Boot up... download... press play! Done.

our music gets stored, labled, and cataloged in mere moments. the quality too is now just as fascinating and appealing and alluring.

So why not have a library of nearly 3000 Cds you can put in your coat pocket? Or 10,000 that you can hold in one hand?

Why not for $4K or less? And why not if the sound quality surpasses that of $5 to $6K CD players easily?

I work at a computer 6-7 hours of my work day. It will be a long time before I make a jump to having my music on a hard drive. There is more to life that these damn machines, at least there is for now.

One mans trash is another mans treasure. So, rip away and sell those discs!

I will wait as the prices are going down and the sound is improving. Also, more user friendly systems are coming out.
Why not wait? I still have my CD's, still have music to play and am not missing out of the end result - music!

I think that is pretty sound reasoning and the question is not IF I jump in, but it really is a question of WHEN.

I will jump in Blindjim, but I will be quite content to be patient on this one. No down side to wait it seems to me.