more major players jumping on the sacd bandwagon

Ordinary folks which make up of 99.99% of music buying population will continue to buy their favorite CD. They don't care about the SACD or DVD-audio. They are very happy with the CD performance. The remaining 0.01% which make up the audiophile population are just sitting and watching. Out of those 0.01%, may be 0.0001% had gone out and bought a few SACD players and a few SACD. That all folk! In my audiophile club, none of the member make a move into SACD! For myself, I even go back to vinyl and love it very much. In my opinion not even the latest SACD can rival it! Whatever breakthrough in SACD or DVD-audio are making no differences since most of the best recording engineers are gone anyway.

I saw that article along with another that stated that some chip maker was coming out with very low-cost SACD chip sets - ie, Discmans with SACD capability. More publishers' support coupled with getting the price down to the "normal" CD price, in exchange (implicitly) for corralling the CDR phenomena - it might just take hold. -Kirk

As far as the Betamax comparison and the Stereophile article; most to all major films were available on Betamax. This did nothing to save it. So more record labels producing SACD may prove nothing. It really comes down to whether Sony will share the technology to all comers. Sony keeping Betamax technology mostly to themselves, was one reason it never took off.

I don't even understand the argument an more. SACD is in the mass market stores now. The machines are priced only a bit above a good quality cd player and yet allow for CD's, DVD video, CD-R and SACD, both is two channel or up to six channel. The DVD-A if it actually existed allows for DVD-A playback. Who would buy a DVD-A machine, even if you could?
The reason SACD is bringing more support is it offers more to the mass market consumer (actually everything they want). If you can buy a single machine that will play four formats and surround for less than a DVD-video and a cd player combined what's the issue?
SACD machines will become the standard for the mass market as people upgrade they old hardware, only because it gives them everything they want in one box. The argument is over, go find a sales man who can explain DVD-A. I noticed in the paper this week-end an add for Best Buy, they stated they now sell DVD players that play audio too! Now you can play back your cd's on your DVD player they report. Of course there years away from actually having DVD-A.
HELLO - News flash, you could already do that. I stated two years ago that DVD-A will fail because people will not understand. DVD is DVD to the masses. SACD is something else, weather they buy the more expensive disks is not now the issue, but when Sony releases the next red hot pop title only on SACD people will understand. Just wait, I'm guessing two to three years!

P.S. Oh yea, lets quite the lame argument that there is nothing on SACD that people would buy. I'm assuming those people have never heard Jazz from the late ‘50's and early ‘60's. It seems to me they (the labels) are starting with the "must have" classic recordings from each venue pop, jazz, classic, etc. As the future recordings are recorded in DSD, the "stuff" you want will also be on SACD, but to say nothing I want is avalible is simply stating your not interested in the classic recordings. That's fine, I happen to find it very enjoyable listening to a recording from 1959 that is of higher quality than 90% of the crap recorded today. There is some amazing music from our past that has new life thanks to SACD. IMO!

We talk a lot about how you can play regular CDs on a SACD machine and they sound very good. How about the other way around. If SACD cannot be played on non SACD machines, then the whole world including Joe consumer will need a new CD player. Will they buy one regardless of the number of record companies making the SACD discs? Eventually as old CD players wear out, everyone will have SACD capability, but will it happen in time?