As I said more than a year ago, the answer to which format will survive is NEITHER! They're both solutions in search of a problem!
The comments about "competitive gen xers" needing to have one to stay "competitive" are TRULY off the mark. At the two year point (yes we are at the two year point with these formats!) EVERYONE knew what cd was. They may not have heard one yet, and most hadn't bought one, but EVERY music lover was aware of the format, and many were drooling over it.
At the two year point DVD-Video was well on it's way to becoming the fastest selling consumer electronics technology in history.
Fact: the vast majority of Americans aren't even aware that DVD-A and SACD EXIST! Imagine they had a war and nobody showed up? No need to imagine any longer! We see the result before our eyes!
One other FACT: the introduction of dvd-a and SACD had NOTHING, and I repeat NOTHING to do with a desire to provide better sounding recordings to the consumer. It had to do with introducing what the record companies believed to be "copy-proof" formats! If the record companies REALLY wanted us to all hear better sound, they would have begun encoding their standard cds with SBM (Super Bit Mapping) some time ago! A dramatic difference that can actually be heard, and demonstrated on EVERY cd player (I'd love to demonstrate SBM to you in my studio, using my Sony DTC-A6 vintage 1997 dat recorder. Recording digital "silence" without SBM results in a very rough, rugged sounding background...when listening at a ridiculously high level! With SBM switched on, the noise drops away, and what little is left takes on a smooth, velvety quality. And again, ALL the horsepower with this technology is on the encoding end. The improvement translates to EVERY cd player!)
Finally: it still remains to be shown scientifically that DVD-A or SACD sound not only better, but DIFFERENT from top quality 16 bit 44.1khz cds in scientifically valid, double-blind testing. It makes no damn difference that the newly remastered recording of your favorite album sounds "so imuch better" on dvd-a or sacd...especially if the new disc is multi-channel. Surely it's occured to you that you're comparing apples to oranges, right?!
Only with an identically prepared master, at an identical level, with TWO channels of audio (and no more because standard cds can't hold any more), under double-blind conditions, can it be shown that there really is an audible difference, much less superiority of one format over the others. And even if such tests do indicate that one format IS audibly, and repeatedly better, is the difference great enough to give up the flexibility of standard cd? (including compatibility with legacy devices, the ability to "rip" tracks for playback on mp3 portables, etc?)
As time goes on I believe more and more that it is LAWYERS rather than engineers or audiophiles behind the pressure to accept one, or both of the new formats. Do we really want lawyers (from the RIAA, etc) telling us that it's time to adopt a new format? Do we really believe that we've gotten all the quality out of 16 bit 44.1khz cds that the format is capable of?
Again I'm from Missouri (ok, I'm from North Carolina!) You've gotta' show me! Again, we're at the two year point. The clock is ticking. The public is still almost completely ignorant of the existence of these formats. And we're in a deep recession. How much longer do you believe it will be before the plug is pulled on one, or both of the new formats? My guess is we're closer to the end than the beginning!
Hedging my bets, I'd say that IF one of the formats survives, or even deserves to, it'll be SACD because the technology is truly different (the 24 bit, 96khz signals on dvd-a re still pulse code modulation...the same technology as cd...just "more of it". But DSD...direct stream digital is TRULY "something different").