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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
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.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
4,163 posts
 
Rehasing old history...the way I heard it, Beta lost when Panasonic made significant monetary payments to the large SoCal porn distributors to stop making Beta tapes. The home market for Beta quickly went limp. Remember though, Beta did not die, it went on to dominate the pro video arena. Sony made money.

Unlike the video tape past, the audio future will not be determined by behind closed door soloists. Audiophiles and music lovers are right now in a postion to influence which formats survive. In order to exercise that influence we will need to stop standing on the sidelines rationalizing our inactivity and instead join the fray. Buying new products and building a library entails taking risks, but isn't everything worth having worth risking something to get?

To everyone sitting on sidelines, stand and be counted, STAND! (na na na na na na na na na na na).
whatjd
615 posts
 
Perhaps a Sony 777 or 333 SACD unit with a Bel Canto DAC-1, or the like, is a reasonable way to go. Venture into the new format..while improving the standard format.
audiodude1
6 posts
 
Has anybody heard either of these formats? Even on a marginal HT receiver and marginal speakers they sound drastically smoother and more listenable than anything previous. On a good system they are tremendous.

2 things important for either format (assuming software is available)are disc prices and copy protection. The discs are $10 higher than "sale" CD prices, which will not encourage the mass market to buy them. There is also very little support from high end manufacturers. No one wants to committ till the copy protection crap is resolved, and the digital hi-rez signals can be output out the digital port. Not unlike early CD players, the DACS will be improved but the poor early adopter will be w/o a cost effective upgrade path.

Not unlike DIVIX, the greedy corp. fools may kill both formats before they catch on.
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