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New formats, same old story?

OK, we continue to be inundated by advice to upgrade to a new digital format. Most say SACD, the rest tell us that DVD-A will be the ticket. My thing is that I would be ready to buy if things were sorted out. They are not yet. It doesn't look any clearer to me than it did a year ago today. Am I blind? Neither has taken precedence. More importantly, neither has had the major influx of software we have been waiting for. A major determinant as to which one wins out in the end. Yes, SOFTWARE. Where is it? Sure, there are some titles out there(how many currently???), but new albums are still more often than not released CD only. The people at the record stores still have not heard of either of the new formats. Yes, I know Sony keeps dangling the influx of new players(even cheap ones) at us, but I am still in the same mindset I was last year. That I don't want to invest in a new player that won't be a REAL step up in terms of CD playback(which would make it worth it) until one of the formats emerges as the future path. And, once the players come, will they be obsoleted by a new twist a couple of years later? As in multichannel - which I am not interested in, or by offering a digital output of the new format's signal. Are my feelings correct, or do I need the way I see things corrected? Thank you.
trelja
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
I have the same feeling Trelja, especially the part about the "new" format being obsolete a few years from now. We have already seen this. In 1996 HDCD came out and was the technology that was going to make Red Book obsolete. Then Red Book 24/96 DACs came out which sound for the most part as good as HDCD, so HDCD is already all but forgotten.


Not saying which format is better, if I were a betting man, I would place my money on DVD-A for the simple reason that it fits closely with the natural progression of Red Book technology. As I understand it, DVD-A is basically 24bit/192Mhz. These DAC chips like everything else will be cheaper in the future and will soon replace the 24/96 chips in the typical mass market $199.00 DVD player. Even in non-DVD, the budget Cambridge Audio D500SE CD Player already has a 24/192 DAC. I see 24/192 DVD-A no different than CD players progressing from 16 bit, to 18, 20, and now 24 bit; and SACD while better in the opinion of many (I have never heard it) could go the way of HDCD by the time 24/192 is replace someday by something like Red Book 26/384 or whatever is next.

sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
PS: What I left out was that Joe and Jane Consumer is most likely never to have more then one system; which will most likely be a HT system. Their DVD player and HT system is also their CD player and audio system. So when (if) 24/196 DVD-A is standard in all DVD players, there will be a market of hundreds of million of consumers to sell these CDs to, not just a handful of audiophiles interested in SACD or something else.
whatjd
615 posts
 
Boy,,,Sugarbrie hit it on the head. It is a numbers game, and we've all seen the number of former "high-end" stores that have sold their souls to home theater in order to survive. Remembering the Beta vs. VHS thing..it was never a question of which was better,..but which sold the most to the average user. With most people that would have been high-enders years ago, now being in the "lets rent 2 movies every night of the week" group you can bet their interest in SACD is...well most people don't even know that either of the higher resolution formats even exist..or care. I wish Sony well, I would love to have the sound of vinyl with the convienence and lack of surface noise of the digital format, but with better sound than current RedBook. However, let's face it...the high-end is a difficult business for a manufacturer or retailer to make money in now-a-days.
lshreve
20 posts
 
Sugarbrie is correct,except he/she forgot to mention that Joe and Jane Consumer are nerds...and they are not audiophiles! This is exactly the Beta/VHS thing all over again. Back then... Joe and Jane looked at both VCRs and the VHS was $50 bucks cheaper so they bought it...as did all their rube friends.

Of course our less-than-marketing-wise friends at SONY never got the message. They knew they had the superior format and, by God, they were going to get their extra $50 bucks a pop. As it turns out, they should have given away the hardware (or sold it on a parity with VHS) to establish the format. In the end, it was not Sony, JVC or Phillips, but Blockbuster who ended the Beta/VHS war. This has to be perhaps the biggest marketing SNAFU in audio/video history.

As Yogi says...."Now it's Deja Vu...all over again"!

It's almost like SONY expects to loose...so they are producing just enough SACD software to suck in the "just-got-to have-it-at-all-cost audiophile market. Well, please excues me this time...I've been on that bus before. The technology is growing so quickly you can must likely expect both formats to be extinct before they gain market dominance. (CD's still sound just fine to Joe and Jane...for today.)

In the final analysis, Joe and Jane of the future will be playing those little "CD" looking "memory chip" things about the size of a quarter (like Mr. Spock drops into the consols on the Starship Enterprise). The new format, dubbed "Wal-Bay", will be developed in a joint venture between the two great entertainment giants of the day...Wal-Mart and ebay...and will, of course, be backward compatible with all audio/video formats known to man, including Beta.

I will be 106 years old and finally all my 78's, 45's, LP's, reel-to-reel, 8-tracks, compact cassetts, el-cassettes, Beta, VHS, SuperBeta, SuperVHS, 8MM, 6MM, CD's, DVD's, mini-disc, SACD's, DVD-A's will be all playable on one machine (I didn't buy Polavison or TiVo...do you think I'm stupid?)

Right now, you are reading this...getting real P.O.'ed and thinking..."There ought to be a law!" ...where's Andy Rooney when you need him?
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
It was not just Beta vs VHS. There is/was SVHS. How many people hear own a Super VHS VCR? It has been around for over 10 years. Your newer TV and DVD player most likely have a SVHS input/output. Toshiba even makes a VCR that will record SVHS on standard VHS tapes. Joe and Jane are nerds, so even a better VHS system does not sell.
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