Thank you for all your useful replies and they were all very informative indeed. However, I might say I have heard nothing really new to help me decide on what to do with my broken Cyrus CD 6, but it has got me thinking we are at a point of change for sure with Digital Music and CDs.
I refer to Digital Music because it is the term to refer to music downloads, and it is a trend we will not be able to stop. The more demand we make to have ever faster broadband and mobile broadband speeds Digital Music will develop, and the once high tech CD will be pushed to the side. I will be explaining to my kids one day for sure, that CDs where the old way of listening music, and remembering nostalgically the good old days of jammed CD trays.
Streaming music will get better in quality over time, because of faster broadband connections will allow almost lossless streaming. Remember SACD and the development of 24bit CDs, streaming HD Audio will come. But it will not be a format war, because it is not about backing one technology in this context, which means your equipment will become obsolete. Because it is all software and you all know our computers can pretty much play any file format. VHS and Betamax is not relevant any more these machines were of a generation before advanced software systems. They here mechanical and electronic, and did not upgrade itself if connected to the internet.
No instead it will be not about the format, but the promise of high quality music delivered to you in a rich interactive content format. iTunes has already done this as you browse through music art, albums, and artist with news and content, and you just need to hit a button and the music is available to you. It is not the bad old thing of instant gratification, but enjoyment of music is important and making it easier to obtain is not a bad thing. It is not solely about technology either, but the way technology enables you to have the enjoyment of music without the headaches what format to use, NAS, updates, WiFi, etc. Please have trust in the innovation of engineers who design and developed these products. They all want you to enjoy the use of their products, and the last thing they want is for it to fail on you. It is just that these wonderful consumer devices are getting easier to use, but they hide an immense complication from you that engineers have to manage. Imagine why people keep saying these days you pocket Smart Phone is in order of million times more processing power than the computers in the first Apollo mission. Infact, your USB flash disk itself has more power than Apollo 11 computers, and this is because the software it runs is actually more complex than the software running on the Apollo 11 to take you to space. That is the amazing fact, but what is more amazing is that we pick up our phones and we don't even blink at this amazing amount of computing power.
This year you will see a revolution that will deliver music across your internet connection that would put CDs on our history books forever. I am afraid this is true and it is progress no matter what the argument is. We all had that with Vinyl and when CDs came the same was said about CDs being inferior, and the album art was so much smaller and less collective than the Vinyl. John Lewis is even selling the Vinyl and their covers stored i npicture frames for you to hang on the wall, which you can unclip to play on your deck. Only problem John Lewis doesn't even sell a record deck of any quality to talk about.
Sorry but I am a believer in streaming, but I do agree at the moment it is a mess. Those manufacturers who have built network players/streamers don't get it. Their systems rely on poor technology i.e. PCs or NAS, which are prone to failure and the home network which is always prone to go offline. The Cloud is the way forward, because our broadband is as important to the electricity and gas supply these days.
Having physical CDs is really only a "comfort" factor people cling to them, but it is not the only way to deliver content in terms of art and written notes from the artist. No, delivery of music streamed is the only way artist can earn a living in the long term, because it is streamed from a sourced that is reputable who has signed a contract and is paying the artist. CD, files copies, are all prone to piracy. Also cloud is much safer to have your music stored. Companies spend millions to ensure the data is kept safe. No one ever complains about the trillions of pounds our pensions, personal money is stored. This is not stored physically, but electronically in huge computer databases. Like money notes, CDs are not timeless and degrade over time, get lost, scratch, damaged by heat when left in the car, and god hopes it never happens goes up in smoke unless you store it in a fire proof safe. I bet no one does this. However music in the cloud does not suffer from any of this, and will remain with you way after you have gone. In fact, all of us will leave a digital legacy of our life's on this planet in the cloud/internet, and that thingy midget we called FaceBook.
So the question is now back to my CD player. My faithful Cyrus CD 6 which decided to die on me. Well I have decided to give it a kiss of life. I will give it one more change, and send it back to Cyrus for repairs. All because I don't want to invest in anything because I have a perfectly good streaming solution from Apple, which I have on good authority will advance this year with something that will change the way we consume music. The Cyrus might therefore get a change to spin up those silver discs, which were so modern when I saw it for the first time on Tomorrows World played on a giant Philips CD player.
So guys I have been around myself and saw the first introduction of CDs. However, I always promised myself to be a Tomorrows man, and less of yesterdays.
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