competing formats always fail so why do they continue? *

after reading the AM stereo fiasco, i was reminded of all the failed technologies that were great but failed due to companies setting up different formats.

ie:

QUAD:

SQ, QS etc

TV RECORDING:

Betamax, VHS

AUDIO RECORDING:

cassette, minidisc, 8 track, reel to reel

NOW MULTICHANNEL

dts, dvdaudio, HDCD, SACD

it always leads to failure because people are not going to buy different players. they are going to either pick ONE or NONE.

multichannel is great but doomed for this very reason. AM stereo was great too but died as a result.

and the consumer always loses ...

 

I understand your overall point, but to be precise:

TV recording as a technology didn't fail...one format simply ultimately triumphed over the other. VHS remains the standard for home recording of TV programs (though its days are numbered), and only recently has lost out to DVD as a commercial medium.

In the earlier days of audio recording, 8-tracks failed simply because cassettes were better (not to mention smaller). Cassettes endured for a very long time as THE portable storage medium for commercially recorded music (beyond the introduction of the CD, as both the medium and the player were cheaper), and have only recently lost out to CD for home recording.

As for reel-to-reel, it coexisted with the first two because it was turned to different purposes (higher-quality, non-portable recording).

So I don't dispute your overall point; it's just that the above examples aren't very good arguments to support it.

 

The winner does very well, and each competitor hopes that he will be the winner.

 

The royalty fees for the developer of a successful format can be enormous. No one wants to back away from the big payday when there is still a chance that their format will be successful. In theory, this kind of competition should result in the better format prevailing, but that does not seem to be the result in all cases (betamax had a better pciture IMO). In the interim, the split format is horrible for the consumer.

 

I wouldn't call audio cassettes a failure. Every car made for like the past 15 years has had a player. Also, cassette tapes were very popular in the 80's.


Also, I wouldn't call SACD a failed format quite yet. Remember, these things take time to catch on. The Compact Disc was released in 1982, but it did not outsell vinyl until 1989.

The transition from 78's to LP's took 20 years!

 

Someone(or some company) is always trying to build a better mouse trap. In the 1980s, you had DCC(digital compact disc) and DAT going head to head with the compact disc. DCC never made and DAT went to the professional market(much like Sony Beta which is still very strong in professional video and it's been refined ever since).

 

Cassettes were very popular for quite a long time (nearly 20 years) and are still found in many cars. The 8 track though stunk from the beginning and luckily disappeared pretty quickly.

 

...why not have a bunch of formats? I see it as an opportunity...bottom line, everyone wants to be successful! My idea's better than yours attitude...usually the lesser quality items wins...VHS/BETA...PC/MAC...etc.

 

I think a few titles were pressed here in 1960; after that, you had to go outside the USA for '78's, which were pressed in some South America and subcontintent countries for years afterward.....a shame, the 78rpm single was a great format, but the 45 took over....

Of course the enduring technology is still around. Not a lot of vinyl is pressed anymore, but just enough to remind us it's out there. Cassettes still do a little business, but have been slowly phased out as much because of space limitations as due to the compact disc. Yet most boom boxes and mini-systems still have tape decks along with the CD player. And VHS, while also reduced in quantity, is still a WalMart staple, so that format, while very flawed, is far from finished....

I wouldn't close the book on hi-rez just yet. It's not looking terribly good, but there will be a format beyond the CD one of these days. I do agree, though, that as most people aren't concerned with sound quality, there's no big impetus to put out a ton of titles...yet. But as long as DV D's support DD and DTS, we'll have multi-channel something out there....

 

In the cinema industry, three of the four digital playback formats that have been invented are still going strong...

DTS
Dolby Digital
SDDS (even though Sony Cinema Products is gone and no SDDS hardware is being made anymore, the format is still being supported by most of the mojor studios)

The only casualty here was CDS (Cinema Digital Sound) which was doomed due to its high read failure rate and its not having an analog back-up track as the other three do.

-Aaron

 

The convenience of the MP3, the iPod, digital downloading, and file sharing has been shown to be of much greater appeal to the average consumer than higher resolution audio. It's really a shame that the mass consumer replacement of the standard redbook cd didn't happen before the onslaught of the above-listed formats. Now it may be too late.

 

Distribution is one of the greatest forces behind an album's success; it is also the force that propelled mp3, and hence music downloads, to where they are now.

When Sony wouldn't open their Beta format to others they lost the main battle to VHS. Why has more public not been exposed to HiRez? I had a long talk with someone from a record company today and many things came up, unfortunately this is not the thread for talking about it. So let me leave it at this. Many product marketing failures have been due to distribution problems. Distribution of the product itself and/or, sometimes, of the information that brings consumer awareness of its characteristics and advantages.

It is interesting to see how the incendiary threads posting SACD against DVD-Audio and vice-versa have died down with the semi-demise of DVD-A. Suddenly all us HiRez fans are in the same boat. The only generally shunned format now is DualDisc, after all it is a Frankenstein of sorts and whatever energy is being put behind it should have been centered on DVD-A and SACD IMHO.

I do not believe that format wars are behind the current issues affecting HiRez's slow expansion or lack of popularization. It's more what I have come to call 'passive marketing.' It's the "Let's see if it picks up and then we'll do something about it" syndrome.

Go to a store and they'll tell you that. Talk to the record companies and they'll tell you that. Talk to many audio enthusiasts and that is what they'll say. Talk to hardware manufacturers and that will be their argument. Talk to audio hardware stores and you'll hear the same thing. To paraphrase a Spanish adage: "They all killed the beast and it died by itself."

 

I believe that there were Beatles singles pressed on 78s in India up to the late 1960's.

The competing formats are developed by different companies (or consortium of companies). Often they will improve on an earlier format, or market forces will prevent them from taking off. For example, dat tape and mini-disk ensured that the digital cassette format didn't get established.