blu-ray music vs DVDA/SACD

[admin_exported]

First of all I've never spent much time listening to DVDA or SACD, I'm sure they're great but until a format goes big and more of the music I love is avaliable they're merely theoretical to me. I've watched the tech develop with casual intrest, so correct me if I'm wrong on anything.

Given blu-rays 24/96 soundtrack is not far off the DVDA ultimate, and the widescale adoption of the format for movies making the players cheap, is it likely we'll see music (not just live concerts/musiv vids) avaliable on the format? how does it compare, both to CD and DVDA/SACD?

 

[Andrew Everard]

A few audio-only Blu-ray Discs already available, notably from Norwegian (predominantly) classical label 2L

 

[Anonymous]

hi for me dvda was a very good music carrier in both stereo and surround
sound, but was never given a chance to blossom as a hi res music carrier
a also liked sacd sound as well and the music industry did not help either format
to succeed with very little promotion of these music carriers, i spent a lot of money
on them and then lost a lot on them as i sold them off,i hope blu ray starts to put some mainstream stereo music
on the blu ray for us to buy soon, as the concert discs i have on blu ray
sound very good and should get better as time passes i hope.

 

[Anonymous]

To be fair I said right from the start that the high-res music-only
formats would have limited appeal, given the high price, bespoke
technology and it's dependency on record companies used to operating on
large scales who'll see it as a little niche format they won't make big
$$$ on. The format war was pretty much the nails for the coffin.
(Thanks sony)

Blu ray audio has a chance at working
because there are millions of players out there and cheap players on
the market so the record companies can enter the market with an
expectation they'll be able to shift a level of units. Now, if you can make a hybrid disc you'd have a universal product-
DTS/DD tracks for retro-play on bog standard DVD players and HD audio
that will only been seen by blu-ray players. Maybe evan a tri-brid
disc with DVDA and/or SACD too. The capacity should be there so long as the players can ignore the formats they don't like. Throw in some "extras" to use up blu-rays
humunguos capacity- Music vids, interviews, lyrics, maybe some
multi-track songs for the kareoke or instrument players ("guitar hero"
seems to be popular at the mo) and you have a product with wide appeal.

 

[Andrew Everard]

unconditional:
Blu ray audio has a chance at working
because there are millions of players out there and cheap players on
the market so the record companies can enter the market with an
expectation they'll be able to shift a level of units.

Wasn't that the plan for DVD-Audio...? Didn't work, I think mainly because people wanted pictures with their music on DVD. And anyway, downloads were on the rise, proving that consumers were more interested in quantity rather than quality, and happy to have the convenience of all their music in a portable low-res form rather than better sound.

The effect of the SACD/DVD-A format war is something of a red herring...

 

[the record spot]

I first heard SACD at a Sony demo in an Edinburgh hotel around ten years ago. The kit was impressive, the music orchestral, maybe a piece on organ too I think, and the sound made an impression.

SACD was 2-channel for some time before multichannel came along and adopted it on the odd release. DVD-A was the big rival format and the manufacturers, record companies and public gave it lip service and precious little more. Oddly, there are more CD players and DVD players handling SACD now than ever before and likewise more artists are releasing albums on SACD too - I think there's now around 5000 titles available. Hardly a dud, but nothing like impact it could/ought to have made.

BR Audio is another dip in the hi-res music pool and another one that'll disappear in no time.

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:
Wasn't that the plan for DVD-Audio...? Didn't work, I think mainly because people wanted pictures with their music on DVD. And anyway, downloads were on the rise, proving that consumers were more interested in quantity rather than quality, and happy to have the convenience of all their music in a portable low-res form rather than better sound.

The effect of the SACD/DVD-A format war is something of a red herring...

As I'm sure you're aware, the master plan for the digital versatile disc was that it'd be a cross platform universal format to handle films, music and data. Problem was they spent so long faffing over the encryption that the DVD-A that ended up being released was incompatible with everyones by now established DVD-V players and the new DVD-A ready players carried such a price premium, that DVD-A was just shuffled into a little niche, bespoke format that most people didn't care about. The format war on top of it all just sealed it...

Wheras todays existing blu-ray players as they stand can handle a HD surround track, they can be what DVD was originally intended to be. While high-def audio will never be the choice of the masses, it stands much better chance of sucess if it's something everyone has easy access to. As for the comment on people preferring to download, thats just the 21st centuary equivalent of me making tape recordings of my mates albums way back when. The record companies were doing just fine then, and despite the horror of filesharing they're still doing just fine today. They'd probably be doing better if they didn't keep shooting themselves in the foot with buggy and clunky copy-protection systems that, like in the DVD-A case, just thrawted the product. I find it incredible that they havn't realsed the inevitability that any copy protection they can impliment will be broken, and that they'd be better off serving the desires of their paying customers, beginning with allowing network video streaming on AV amps.

 

[Anonymous]

At last!

That was the most sensible and brilliant post. I heartilly agree with everything you've just said. Concentrate on giving the consumer what they want, the revenues generated will grow. There will always be a level of background piracy but hamstringing ligitimate consumers just stops revenue growth. Time to be pro-active and sell to those that wish to buy. Hi-def material on BluRay is so good that it's worth paying for. the size is so huge that for the next 3 years, no-one's going to be downloading much of it. So get it into the stores!!