Hi-Rez Highway New high resolution SACD releases, players and technology.

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Interesting concept but ..........

Posted by John C. - Aussie (A) on October 3, 2004 at 15:34:34

In Reply to: What exactly constitutes "success" for a hi-rez format? (long) posted by Bayside Bomber on October 1, 2004 at 20:41:32:

.... how do you analyse the profitability AFTER having spent all the dollars on marketing etc? Seems to me that Sony will be hard pressed to recoup their investment on the retail SACD but the other side of the coin is that DSD was invented in the first place as an archiving medium. So how are those research & development costs allocated between the two?

So, I imagine "sucess" could only be guaged by viewing sales of SACDs covering the costs of production. For those like Pentatone who are (very successfully) recycling older analog material those costs are not prohibitive but the costs from zero to completed of a new recording could be difficult to recover in many cases, particularly if dual layer disk production is expensive.

IMO the video future for HD discs is taking the focus off audio. It appears the Sony group are spending up very big on developing their Blue Ray technology with determined efforts to convince a fairly disinterested Hollywood to go their way. Hollywood appears disinterested at the moment because they are doing very well from DVD thank you and see it as a profitable medium for a few years yet.

Contrast that to audio with declining sales all around and it is easy to understand the business decision by Sony to minimise SACD promotion. As far as they are concerned, it has been promoted and released already so it is up to other companies whether or not to hop on their bandwagon.

It is a crying shame DVD-A had to soil the nest for them, just as the DVD-A camp are not pleased with the emergence of SACD. I can handle both formats but for me, SACD has been relatively more successful. However in general audio sale terms and from the point of view of public acceptability, both have failed. Few people even know (or care) they exist :-(

Who knows the future. Sadly it will most likely be resolved by the HD video - Blue Ray struggle with audio being an offshoot rather than the focus.

John

Interesting times

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