Amazing how much of a marketing push that DualDisc is getting from the various parties. A CD with extra DVD content, and a consistent format that all of the record companies are using -- shouldn't this have been planned from the beginning? With SACD and DVD-A, we got probably the most botched product launch this side of quadrophonic. A format war from the outset, plus the forced use of six-channel analog ouputs, are just two of the flaws that hobbled those formats.

SACD had an opportunity to take over the market because of its hybrid backwards compatibility with the CD format. Hybrid SACD/CD discs could have become the de facto standard in the market, but the widespread adoption of hybrid discs never took hold. IMO, Sony made a huge mistake by initially marketing it strictly as an audiophile format in order to push non-hybrid high res two-channel versions. They should have been pushing the multichannel capabilities hard from the very beginning.

Likewise, DVD-A's inability to provide backwards compatibility with the CD was its achilles heel. Any format that requires dual inventories is going to find big time resistance at the retail end. DualDisc was supposed to address this weakness, but the way that the DualDisc releases have sifted out, unfortunately providing high resolution multichannel playback does not seem to be part of the picture.

Thus far, the DualDiscs that I have seen generally offer an "enhanced stereo" mix (typically a 48/16 resolution track that's just raises the sampling rate), a multichannel mix in 5.1 Dolby Digital, and some video content.

The "enhanced stereo" mix might provide an opportunity to remaster and improve upon an existing version, but going with video content on the DVD layer now means that there's no longer enough disc space for anything beyond Dolby Digital for the multichannel audio. And to me, that's the biggest step backwards that DualDisc represents.

If DualDisc takes off, then it's great that so much more music be available in multichannel versions. But, the price is that we're stuck with the limitations of Dolby Digital.

I get the impression that SACD and DVD-A will soldier on as limited niche formats, but it seems that DualDisc has wiped out whatever chances that those formats had at succeeding as a mass market format.