I've had an Anthem CD-1 for ten years; I think it sounds good. I too think HDCD is an improvement. Perhaps that one reason didn't catch on was that it started life as a proprietary process, not an open system. I know that the Sonic Solutions mastering suite wouldn't encode it (I don't know if this is still the case,) and Sonic Solutions was the market leader in cd mastering.
I may be wrong in the details, but this was the reason I wasn't able to use HDCD on some the cd projects I produced, at least according to my mastering engineer. The reason I stuck with him was because he is the best in town, and my one experience with using out-of-town mastering taught me I want to be present at the session. (In the end I caught what I wanted on that project (including HDCD) but it was an expensive learning experience.)
I may be wrong in the details, but this was the reason I wasn't able to use HDCD on some the cd projects I produced, at least according to my mastering engineer. The reason I stuck with him was because he is the best in town, and my one experience with using out-of-town mastering taught me I want to be present at the session. (In the end I caught what I wanted on that project (including HDCD) but it was an expensive learning experience.)