[Illah]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omedon Any new format is going to have to compete against all the previously released formats making it harder than ever to get a foothold in the market. Studio's will continue to gleefully pump out CD's, which are good enough for most everybody, as long as people continue to buy them.

That's the key right there. For a higher-def recording medium to get mass appeal it will need to wow WalMart shoppers in Oklahoma just as much as audiophiles, which in turn will cause every major electronics manufacturer to offer up a player, which will cause huge price competition, and the next thing you know grocery stores will have $40 players to play the new format.

HOWEVER, I predict this new format will not be on a disc...it will be downloadable. Think MP3+ or SuperMP3. An engineer develops an amazing new compression algo that's lossless yet produces filesizes of 1MB / minute @ 44.1/16, or maybe 96/24 material compressed with little/no quality loss to a reasonable filesize, etc. Storage is getting cheaper and smaller and new algos are being worked on somewhere out there, this is the future of audio. Download a couple albums at home on broadband, load it to your iPod/cell phone, wirelessly play it in your car (many luxury/mid-high end cars already have bluetooth, is WiFi next?), then walk in to your office and play it there through your computer, and pop on your headphones for your evening jog.

--Illah

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by riffer But it still outsells DVD-A and SACD combined: http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/...arEndStats.pdf I am sitting on the fence for now. I have enough Betamax tapes sitting around to remind me why

yep i have a few sacds but they are hybrids so i get the redbook use outta them. and i only have one DVD-A: Led Zep's how the west was one. sounded great from my Toshiba 3960 dvd player.

i won't invest in a hi-def player till they decide on a format - that's just tossing $$$ down the drain till they do imho. plus it will be awhile until they surpass what they can do with redbook and all the tricks and tweaks they have for it by this late in the game.

 

[jpelg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn i won't invest in a hi-def player till they decide on a format.

The thing is that any hi-rez format is a niche market unless it is integrated with the existing media, like hybrid SACD's are. Too bad they aren't common enough. Sony should have given away the rights so that other music companies could produce dual-layer Redbook/SACD discs inexpensively. Now, remember that simply pressing a poorly recorded and/or mastered recording into a hi-rez format doesn't make it sound good, necessarily. It's the entire process. But by backdoor-ing a hi-rez format into the mainstream without the public even being aware, getting studios to produce better content would become more & more likely, and selling combo CD/DVD/SACD players would a no-brainer. But that's old news.

That "standardized" format that you are waiting to be decided upon will never happen. Not until an entirely new media is created and forced down our throats. Anyone old enough the remember when CD's first came out

? It wasn't exactly painless. It was a complete paradigm shift.

No, you buy a hi-rez player & media to get the benefits now because it's whats here now. How much those "benefits" matter is up to you to decide, and for many people it isn't worth it. I can understand that. But I can hear those benefits quite easily, and I'm excited to get back into the format again. Maybe there will be some SACD fire sales soon, so I can pick some more up on the cheap

. Still, I'd be hard-pressed to spend money on a single-layer SACD unless I had the redbook already too.

 

[soundboy]

For those who still dream of SACD/DVD-A superceding CD in the mainstream marketplace, that dream is over. SACD, as mentioned before, will continue as a niche/audiophile format while DVD-A is quickly morphing into DualDisc (and losing the hi-rez content). There's no way around this fact.

As for RIAA's numbers, I seriously doubt those. Personally, I think the sales of SACD/DVD-A is underestimated. Most of these formats' sales come from independent music stores or over the internet, not Walmart. I am quite certain the sales are good enough that companies aren't losing money on their projects, as the head of Telarc mentioned in an article I read.

Sony has not given up yet....2 new SACD titles to be released domestically in the next 2 weeks.

 

[riffer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soundboy As for RIAA's numbers, I seriously doubt those. Personally, I think the sales of SACD/DVD-A is underestimated. Most of these formats' sales come from independent music stores or over the internet, not Walmart...

So Walmart sells vinyl?

Otherwise a valid point.

IMHO Until every SACD has a Redbook side, SACD will not take over. If every CD had a SACD side and a Redbook side, people could just buy the disk and not worry. Once they had accumulated enough SACD's they would then have a good reason to buy a SACD player.

Then there is the issue of the non-high resolution SACD's like the Norah Jones one last year....

 

[Illah]

I'm pretty sure the RIAA is smart enough to count sales at the production level - i.e. production volume and/or wholesale - and not at the retail stores themselves. Think about it - there are literally millions of stores in the world, how efficient would that be

But when Mr. Niche Online Retailer places an order with one of the handful of wholesalers who distribute the major labels' products, now that's MUCH easier to track.

--Illah

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illah I'm pretty sure the RIAA is smart enough to count sales at the production level - i.e. production volume and/or wholesale - and not at the retail stores themselves. Think about it - there are literally millions of stores in the world, how efficient would that be But when Mr. Niche Online Retailer places an order with one of the handful of wholesalers who distribute the major labels' products, now that's MUCH easier to track. --Illah

But RIAA only counts sales via its Soundscan process. And only in the US. For those of us in the US who purchased Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" SACD, those sales don't register because the SACD is not officially released domestically. Same with my Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, hybrid Dave Brubeck, or Beyonce SACD....yet I am buying them.

 

[JefferyK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bundee1 <<Edited by moderator...no personal attacks, please>> The biggest selling point of DVD has always been the picture quality, that and durability. Some VHS tapes already had bonus features but the picture always deteriorated from the first play on.

Really? I thought the biggest selling point of DVD was the cheap software prices. Generally speaking, DVDs are cheaper than VHS tapes ever were and music DVDs are cheaper than CDs.

As far as picture quality goes... Better and more reliable than VHS? Probably. But there is poor-quality DVD video. For example, a lot of those DVD reissues of classic TV shows that cram 25 episodes on a disc are very grainy. And people still seem to buy them. I don't think video quality matters to most consumers.

I also don't think consumers care much about DVD bonus features. For example, do you scroll through things like still galleries or sit through boring interviews with people barely relevant to the main feature? I don't.

Jeffery

 

[JefferyK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by riffer But it still outsells DVD-A and SACD combined: http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/...arEndStats.pdf I am sitting on the fence for now. I have enough Betamax tapes sitting around to remind me why

The meaningful numbers on that chart are the year-over-year increases and decreases in volume.

LP sales volume has decreased at a double-digit rate since 2001.

Jeffery

 

[JefferyK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illah I'm pretty sure the RIAA is smart enough to count sales at the production level - i.e. production volume and/or wholesale - and not at the retail stores themselves. Think about it - there are literally millions of stores in the world, how efficient would that be But when Mr. Niche Online Retailer places an order with one of the handful of wholesalers who distribute the major labels' products, now that's MUCH easier to track. --Illah

Counting sales at production leads to corruption. It's one reason why gold records were passed out like potato chips during the 1970s: A record company would press 2 million records, chuck a million of them in the dumpster, then hype the alleged sales. It's also why a lot of artists who made records during the '50s and '60s complain that their sales were underreported: Some companies cited low sales number to avoid paying artists their cuts. Don't forget that for many years record distribution was in the hands of organized crime. The music business is still very corrupt.

Tracking sales at the register is far more fair and accurate.

Jeffery

 

[riffer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JefferyK The meaningful numbers on that chart are the year-over-year increases and decreases in volume. LP sales volume has decreased at a double-digit rate since 2001. Jeffery

But they still outsell DVD-A and SACD Combined

The 2005 data will be very revealing - is DVD-A dead? Has SACD stalled? Is Vinyl really becoming trendy?

 

[JefferyK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by riffer But they still outsell DVD-A and SACD Combined The 2005 data will be very revealing - is DVD-A dead? Has SACD stalled? Is Vinyl really becoming trendy?

Okay, okay. But LP made the music business less money than DVD-A and SACD combined!

I'm curious about the 2005 numbers, too. And that chart is pretty interesting. Poor old cassette! What a plummet over ten years!

Jeffery

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JefferyK The meaningful numbers on that chart are the year-over-year increases and decreases in volume. LP sales volume has decreased at a double-digit rate since 2001.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JefferyK Okay, okay. But LP made the music business less money than DVD-A and SACD combined! I'm curious about the 2005 numbers, too. And that chart is pretty interesting. Poor old cassette! What a plummet over ten years!

And although CD sales volume has recovered slightly in 2004, CD sales volume since 2001 has decreased at a nearly double-digit rate between 2001 and 2003 - largely due to the relative lack of good CD new-release titles. Most of the new-release CDs sold during that period were those titles which their buyers listen to only once or twice, and then let them gather dust.

By the way, 2005 so far is turning out to be the same old story as the 2001-2003 period for CD: Mostly disposable junk which passes for albums, with very few worthwhile new releases.

 

[Zanth]

Regarding DVD vs. VHS, it was not the features that grabbed the public's attention, it was the convenience of the format. Smaller, more durable, no rewinding. It was the exact same paradigm shift from casette to cd or vinyl to cd. Convenience and form factor won out. The fact that DVD's have bonus features is well, a bonus! Nothing more. In fact, I know VERY few people that watch bonus features let alone rewatch them. I have more than a few videophiles, collections nearing 5000 dvds, and they simply don't do bonus features.

Quality may have been a perceived benefit but it was not a driving factor, particularly given that most tv's don't have the resolution to take full advantage of DVD's.

As for SACD and DVD-A, jpelg pegged it. Both factions dropped the ball. EVERY new player, be it DVD or cd player should have been equipped to playback one or both of those formats. Sneak it in, have hybrid discs EVERYWHERE, and then, one day, someone will actually take notice, and perhaps the better sound will be realized but at worst there will be market penetration nearly saturation. This didn't happen, at to their loss. The next format will work well enough because of the massive size differential, but there won't be a full paradigm shift away from an optical disc (particularly RBCD and DVD) until flash-like media is sold in stores and/or media is streamed. The general public is more than content with CD and DVD, as well they should be! Without good equipement, the benefits of the better formats are wasted on them.

 

[JefferyK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver Most of the new-release CDs sold during that period were those titles which their buyers listen to only once or twice, and then let them gather dust.

How do you know this?

Jeffery