LP's coming back in style.

[RGA]

The fact is that consumers have bought millions of SACDs, and many of them don't even know that they have SACD until they look at the liner notes. SACD cannot succeed as a standalone format. Audio-only players are a deadend market. Any new audio format will have to piggyback on the direction of the DVD market, because that's where the bulk of the product development and consumer spending is going.

This is my point - the market doesn't give a crap about SACD. They are buying it because it's a CD.

Consumers have already decided that the CD no longer represents value for their entertainment dollar, as evidenced by the 30+% decline in CD sales over the past few years. Downloading is not the issue, entertainment value compared with DVDs and videogames IS the issue. Consumers are buying up DVDs and videogames in bunches, and if you look at the dollar allocations, the losses in CD sales correlate directly to gains in the DVD and videogame markets.

Ohh I think Downloading IS the issue. Peaple here download like mad and run their computer through their stereos. DVD sales and videp games have nothing to do with it. How many MUSIC DVDs are selling perhaps. I'm not saying that DVD and Video games are not sellling better - there is only so mauch a person can purchase. But what SACD has to do with any of this. That is an audio format only. To me SACD they've invested heavily into and are stuck with it - Sony is big enough to FORCE it on the consumer.

Yamaha, Denon, Pioneer, Samsung, Toshiba, Onkyo, and Marantz have all come out with affordable universal players since the start of the year. Sony and Philips continue to come out with new SACD models. They're all over the place in the stores that I visit, and Best Buy stocks at least two universal players, and two Sony SACD models; and the store I visited last week had only THREE CD players on display. If your criteria for success is sales for audio-only players, that simply does not acknowledge market reality.

I never argued that universal players were less popular. Of course the average person would rather spend $89.00 and get a player that plays all formats than spend $400.00 on a NAD cd player. Nothing really new there. And of course if in 2 years EVERY player has SACD in their universal player then naturally SACD will be called an unheralded success. What I'm saying is that the masses didn't ASK and demand that CRAPPY cds be replaced. What happened was that CD sales flattened and started declining so to generate sales and hopefully get people to re-purchase all their cds on SACD so they can make a ton of cash. DVD's keep coming out with lousy first versions and then a second superior edition for the exact same reason - sell the person the same movie twice or more if you're lucky.

You have to look at the big picture. The CD format has now been around for 22 years, and with the market now transitioning rapidly into multichannel, some kind of multichannel audio carrier HAD to be developed. A high res PCM based multichannel audio-only format was always part of the plan when the DVD format was getting developed. It's not about getting people to dump their CD collections, it's about transitioning the market into a higher resolution format that can do multichannel audio, carry video signals, and incorporate copy protection.

It's the last reason that is driving the market at this point.

If you look at Sony's SACD's plans as purely profit driven, that completely misses out on the changes that are ongoing in the industry. Basically, you're saying that companies should just hitch their wagon to the CD and stick to it. Anyone who tries to transition the market towards anything else is doing it only for the money. But, seeing how the CD market is getting squeezed on all sides, failing to adapt to a changing home entertainment market would be extraordinarily foolhardy. If the end result is higher resolution multichannel audio, then I'm all for it.

Of courese Sony is all about money and they are driving the changes - the consumer isn't asking for SACD - SACD soul purpose is to generate profit because CD sales are falling because of copying(since affordable CDWR came to market so did conveniently SACD and DVD-A). And they need something in order to con everyone into replacing their music with a new more expensive one - give them a reverberation effect out their rear speakers.

Are you disappointed that Sony bumped down the SACD player and disc prices? Should they have kept the prices high forever? Look at ANY home entertainment format, they start with high priced hardware that only early adopters can afford, and then gradually transition into the mass market price points, until eventually the product is sold at the corner convenience store. Just because you couldn't find any titles up in BC is hardly a barometer of how a format is doing overall. The absence of SACD titles in your neighborhood is no more an indicator of how a format is doing nationally than the sudden appearance of LPs in those same stores.

I have no problem with the strategy from a business perspective whatsoever. You charge whatever the market will bare. You bring out X technology and sell to the Rich. Onvce that marketdries up you bring it down to the Yuppie who isn't quite rich buit wants everyone to think he is. Then to the upper middle class then eventually it's in Wal-Mart. One just needs to look at DVD players - Hell a girl I know got a DVD player for $10.00 - that's Canadian so about $6.85. Granted a super sale of some sort but that's ridiculously cheap.

Hell even the Wega TV's that were all over $1200.00Cdn a couple years ago are now on for $479Cdn 27inch. I don't have a problem with most of this. And the Cd players all sound the same camp won't either. After listening to my budget cd player's cd player section I wonder if it'snot deliberately built to sound that horrible in order to make DVD sound look better in comparison. Well that's a conspiracy maybe it's just the first place they're going to cheap out because I havce not heard 2 channel cd sound that bad since the 1980s.