"Big guns join SACD/DVD-Audio fight"

We know most of this here but check out:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030127/en_usatoday/4812106

 

My exception to the article is that I can't see why they can't co-exist as long as universal players become the norm.

 

I also must wonder: If one format "dies", how is the other format the "winner"? There is no guarantee that either will survive.


- Gabe

 

Love that pop-up I got from Netflix for reading a not very informative article. But it's worth commenting on. There's obviously a lot of big company backing for both formats, and too hard to predict whether either or both will thrive. They both can be made to play on 'existing' (i.e. non-high rez) players, but only DVD-A will give surround in non-high rez. An advantage for DVD. More people probably own regular CD players, and they come in portable versions. An advantage for SACD. I think the public is moving to DVD for its video, and DVD in general. I give the advantage to DVD at this point. We all know that quality is beside the point, look to Beta Video as an example.

 

Fortunately, DVD provides potential for much higher quality than CD. Being backwards compatable to cd is also an option DVD-A can, and will likely, explore. DVD is a -huge- medium now, and I don't see that going away. In fact, I see a time in the not too distant future where movie and concert releases will be dvd ONLY. Players are getting really cheap now and you will see cassettes and vhs become phased out relics of the past. It won't be hard to pull others into the hi-rez market as long as there is compatablity with their existing equipment....people will have to upgrade to a new (hopefully DVD-A/SACD compatable) player eventually. All they have to do is start making those universal players the norm...

 

lennonfan,

D/A converters which accept DSD and hi-res PCM input are the norm now, they are cheap (something like 4 bucks for state of the art D/A converters)

So it is all a matter of software in the players. It seems to me that including or not including the capability to play both DVD-A and SACD is purely a marketing and political decision.

 

I remember reading that the chips were rather cheap. I wonder why the majors aren't getting on the stick??
I also wonder why DVD-A is so slllllooooow with releasing titles. I really love the ones I have, gotta admit.

 

As one who loves both his DVDA's and SACD's, I hope the two can eventually co-exist peacefully.

The good news of course is that Universal players are already out and cheaper ones are on the way. That's a win-win for everybody who loves music.
These Universal players are quite extraordinary since they can play everything you can throw at them. Can't beat a player that does CD/SACD/DVDA/DVD-Video/Video-CD/DVD-R/DVD-RAM/ even possibly HDCD with certain brands (Denon?).

Hi-Rez whether DVDA or SACD is the real deal. It would be great if everyone could afford a decent combi player real soon.

 

There is absolutely no reason for the formats to coexist. They do the exact same things. The presence of both is doing nothing but confusing consumers who aren't as plugged into the technology as we are. They will not adopt until they know which will "win". And labels won't commit to production gear for one or the other or make a significant commitment to SACD or DVD-A until there is industry-wide consensus on which should move forward.

 

Maybe this is a stupid question, but are there burners that enable users to burn DVD-A discs on a computer? If so, will the copy be "hi-rez"? If not, I really don't think either format will take off until such time that users will be able to make compilations in same way we were able to do with cassettes and are able now to do with CD-Rs.

 

The issues:

1. single layer SACD's don't play on DVD or CD players.
2. Multi-channel SACD's only play in Stereo on Stereo SACD players.
3. Not all hybrid SACD disks play with 100% reliability on various CD or DVD or even SACD players. Perhaps they will get the bugs out; but some DVD players such as the Samsung line, spit out hybrid disks.
4. Most if not all SACD stereo and multi-channel players lack full bass management and almost none have both bass management and channel timing alignment for multi-channel SACD.
5. There is as yet no standard DVD-A standard for disk menu formating such that disks start playing without the need for a TV display to work the menu (in fact there has been a free for all on disk formating and menu design with some players and disk mastering bugs).
6. Almost no DVD-A player sports bass management and none yet sport multi-channel timing alignment adjustments.
7. There is some hope. With a common adoption of HDMI interconnects for SACD and DVD-A audio receivers can be designed with full bass managment and timing alignment adjustments in DSM and or high rez PCM mode and the cost of universal players can drop significantly as the decoding is moved to the receiver.
8. The real issue is that this whole subject has become so confussed that the poor consumer is left with more questions than answers, and questions don't translate into sales.

Richard.