Coping in an Age of Uncertainty

Ears--- I think it's great that video has that importance to you. I suppose I'm very lucky in that the few movies I watch are quite satisfactory, to me at least, on my 19" TV set! In all honesty, I see very, very few movies advertised in which I have any interest whatsoever, whether watched on my set or on a screen as big as the side of a house, with detail like a fine color photograph. I've got enough obsessions already without adding video to the pile!
My only justification for switching to digital cable was for a greater variety of programming----primarily for Speedvision. Yeah----cars are one of my obsessions! Porsches specifically.

If I were into high rez video I would no longer be agonizing over the purchase of a 9000ES----it would already be in my rack!
Jim

ah, hence the 914 nut handle,video comes a far distant second to audio for me also.But if my family wants to watch movies,i make the effort to have decent sound and picture quality.there are a lot of old classics on dvd also,not just the latest blockbusters.Although not quite a porshe i do have an oo lightning that i drag race and beat new vettes with.It is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.Phillips is supposed to have a car sacd player coming out,but i would not be able to hear it in this particular vehicle.Iknow what you mean about obsessions,i always need more than one hobby,audio is just one.

I do not think there will ever be one great format so uncertainty will last forever. CD will be viewed by many as the last great format.

I think that CDs, HDCDs, XRCDs, Gold CDs, vinyl, mini-discs, DVD-Prologic, VCR recordings, CD-Video, Laser Discs, and 96/24 DADs will decline in the near future.

Growing in popularity is MP3, Windows Media, DVD-Dolby Digital, DVD-DTS, DVD-Audio, and SACD. We'll see more units with upsampling--even receivers. Probably next year there'll be something else (MP4?, Windows Media II?, 6.1?, 7.1?, quad?, Chesky's 6.0?). Interesting times.

There's now just me and my Cornish Rex, Leeza, and she appears to be even less concerned about picture quality than I am!
Jim

I'm in the camp with Trelja, Sedond, Samir, Snook2 and others who say "it's the software"-- right on! I've yet to see an SACD disc that I actually wanted to perchase. I have a great CD playback system already and 1,000 CDs that I really like. If SACD does take off, I would have no problem with setting a nice SACD player right next to my nice CD player. I don't see this position as "sitting on the fence"-- there's no software to buy! There seem to be some that still do not understand that up-sampling and over sampling, which has been used for years, are essentially the same thing. Look up the thread "Up & Over Sampling" from last summer. Cheers. Craig.