Ben, I agree with your thoughts. However, it could be this very path that Sony has taken is the problem. If they had just released SACD machines and SACD disks....and if because of this, they were more obviously superior..and the press and public became aware of this...well..who knows ?
It seems that this is the only format I can think of that has tried this backwards compatability path. Like Linn didn't comeout with a slot in the side of their turntables to play casettes...or casette players that had a slot for CD's. Their current path has confused it with the standard CD..rather than having the specialized and general public see it as a truly different format.
It is the same logic that seperates pre and power amp., or highend tuners being FM only...etc.
I do think that path may have taken SACD somewhere rather than the nearly nowhere it is going.
But if it is a superior format...they can't prove it in dream machines or the like...if it's highend, perhaps they need to go back and really establish that before there can be any trickle-down. Seems Sony got into trickle down and trying to put SACD into Bose like quality items..before they established that it should trickle-down?