Not wasting my time on new Digital

And to top all of this off, now we have Blue Ray technology coming to the forefront from the same wonderful people that gave us SACD and DVD A. I absolutely refuse to invest in this, till it is totally proven. We all know the current fiasco regarding SACD and DVD-A. Please Sony, enough is enough.

And to D-edwards, yep I am an aging baby boomer. Been in this hobby/business since 1957, owned and sold more gear that you can possibly fathom. I do take offense as being dismissed as nothing more than a relic.

Got into digital the day it hit the streets. In fact when I purchased the first CD Player, there was only 25 CD titles in the Schwanns Catalog. Digital has its place as does analog. Also have had a very expensive Lexicon HT system. Great for movies, total dreck for music.

For all the prowess that Digital provides, when it comes to accurate musical reproduction, it is only of late, that the promise of digital is coming to light, but the jury is still out for me. It takes a damn expensive digital player to get music,not movies, to sound correct.

While it's not clear whether HD DVD or Blu-ray will win out, one of them surely will. Because unlike SACD and DVD-A, these new formats have compelling benefits for the mass market.

For what it is worth. Once again Sony wants to re-package and re-sell their existing library. This marketing strategy always fails. No one with any common sense, no matter how good Blue Ray or HD DVD may or may not be, is going to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to re-populate what they already own in an existing format.

If Blue Ray or HD DVD is a superior process, it will have to very right straight out of the box and have such a dramatic impact to make all other digital forms obsolete immediately. Thats an almost impossible task, due to the fact that costs at the retail level cannot exceed the magic $399.00 for a launch of a new format player. Software has to be priced very near current levels. At present all I see is a lot of red ink to be overcome. And for the consumer another format to deal with, that has all the potential of another SACD or DVD-A demise, that leaves consumers with outdated formats, that consumers paid far to much for. Till proven different, I believe this to be another fad, with zero substance.

There is a need for a new digital system to raise the bar, that we have had since 1982, but major breakthroughs do not occur often and are not priced at entry level consumer gear in the initial launch. In 1982 I paid a very hefty price for a first generation CD Player and the first CD discs were very expensive, when compared to the analog LP of the same period.

With Blue Ray and HD DVD I do not see that happening. These new operating systems will have to hit the decks running and the return on investment to Sony will have to be swift. Entry level consumer electronic products, due to their mass market nature, will not have the build, parts, or reliability quality to ensure consumer confidence after the launch.

But, I am always ready to be impressed beyond my wildest expectations, which happens all to infrequently and after 48 years in this hobby business, major breakthroughs I can count on the fingers of one hand. I spent a lot of years at CBS/Columbia and well remember the Quad disaster of 1975. There is not a better mouse trap, only major break throughs that deliver the promise, and that technology is expensive to R&D and deliver to the market place.

Both CD and DVD offered advantages to consumers that made them a no-brainer to adopt once software became plentiful and hardware prices dropped. With the new DVD formats, the advantages are clearly less but they are more compelling than just "better sound". Through mainstream systems, the better sound of SACD and DVD-A was not better enough. But I think the better picture of the HD DVD formats (on HD displays) will be better enough, and combined with the greater capacity of the discs, you have something that will move consumers to upgrade. And the barriers to adoption are fairly low. The new players will play old DVDs, correct? So you won't replace your old collection necessarily, but you may be motivated to get a new DVD player by the prospect of buying (or renting) an entire season of Deadwood on a single disc.

The improved PQ of 1080p over DVD's current 480p is pretty obvious and most of us who have HD displays, even if not 1080p, will go for an HD player as soon as Netflix starts offering the formats on a good number of new or interesting older releases. Netflix, along with Blockbuster, has some power in how this plays out (which formats do they offer?). The studios probably have more power.

Blu-ray at least promises interactivity, and I imagine that what this really means is you'll be encouraged to buy things directly while watching content. That's a big enough carrot to drive development of some pretty clever promotions, which may suck consumers in.

The next generation of broadband into the home is a wildcard here if HD on-demand begins to materialize.