Too snobbish for SACD as it exists?

Nealb, I believe you are correct, I'm not positive but I do believe I heard Sony tried to control the Beta software market. You'd think you'd learn from your mistakes. But the question is: Is total short term market domination more profitable than the long term not dominating the market? You know how business is, make the buck today don't worry about tomorrow. Sony is probably making a killing by dominating the market, they don't really care about the long term future of SACD anymore than they did about Beta. Make a killing now, and our R&D will come out with another format so we can dominate another market. Sony is too smart to not learn from their mistakes, so that tells me Beta was no mistake. They dominated a market for several years and made a killing.

Jmcgrogan2 and Nealb, Beta was a video delivery system developed by Sony to compete against VHS.
Sony did make a mistake, they felt people would pay more for a better picture, they found that the masses don't care. Beta is still used professionally today.
SACD is again the better system, and it's still unknown as to wether the masses care.
The reason Sony and Phillips have created this format is because the license agreement to be paid royalties for the development of cd is about over, and therefor they stand to lose billions of dollars if they are not successful in cornering a new format.
The discussion of Sony and there mistake with Beta is funny to me. Yes they lost that one, they still own the market of VHS and they have owned the cd market for 20 years. Sony has nothing they need to prove folks. They have a massive marketing department, they have developed and improved electronic audio components, tv, computer, blah blah blah. Just because they haven't gone and made $20,000 cd players doesn't say they are incapable of it, they just don't need to. If you want to not buy Sony than by all means go back to vinyl, Oh but don't use any labels they own or any electronics they helped develop.
25 years ago I bought a Trinitron tv and two years ago an SACD player. Both are fantastic products, but then again both were there top of the line. The t.v., still works better than 95% of what's out there. The SCD-1, well those sitting out are losing, not Sony and not me! J.D.

J.D. I'm not bashing Sony or SACD, I'm just wondering why they don't let the software go take off so they can let the SACD format fly. I think SACD is a great format, but you are right in saying the buying public has shown no loyalty to superior technologies. I own many fine Sony products myself, but right now, software limitations preclude me from jumping on the SACD bandwagon. I will listen to a poor recording of a great performance before I'll listen to a great recording of a poor performance. That doesn't mean all SACD's are poor performers, it just means I need to see a wider variety of my favorite performers released on SACD before I'd shell out for the hardware. I can't help but wonder if Sony's grasp of the software industry is holding up more SACD releases.

Jmcgrogan2, I didn't take your comments as bashing, it's just interesting how the public perceives Sony. I've always had a snobbish thing against them, luckly I tried it. My feeling is it will require one or two of the DVD-A alliance to come over to SACD befor alot of software comes out. Right now I'm guessing thier producing the SACD on thier redbook production lines. When cd came out it was slow getting software the first four or five years. I remember going in weekly to my local shop to see what came out, it was mabe five a week and a couple imports.The cost was about $15-20 and imports $20-30, just like now! They finally built a couple plants and things moved much quicker. I even seem to remember a fire in one of the plants that almost stopped the whole production for a year. Same deal as RAM cards. Remember when the memory factory burned, Ram prices jumped huge. What was it, like $30/meg.
Anywho, it will be slow I'm sure. I wish there was a bigger selection too, but I still get the benifit of great redbook playback for a good price.
J.D.

JD, FYI, Sony owned the rights to VHS originally, and sold them, because they thought that Beta was the superior format. Fast forward, VHS wins the battle. Why, when video recorders were first on the market I overheard a conversation between a customer and a salesman. Customer: Which one is better? Salesman: well... this one (Beta) records 2 hours, and this one (VHS) records for 3 hours. Which one do you want? Customer, I'll take the 3 hours. Enuff said!