Is SACD a dead format?

Jayctoy, I don't have experience with more expensive players but I have a Pioneer 563. It is hard to tell a difference between this player and my Njoe Tjoeb.

Never bought a SACD player, DVD-A player, nor any software in either format. Never will. Like Plinko, I'm happy with my Njoe Tjoeb. I'll trade my BetaMax for your redbook CD's. Wanna? Wanna? Please...

I don't think these formats wars really have anything to do with sound. If you look at the general buying public, do they care about a hi-rez format? No, they care about convinence. When the 8-track came out, it was convinence. Then the cassette tape-convinence over reel to reel and records.
Now look at CD (the perfect sound forever) and it was the convinence of the format that drove it to what it is. (We could also say the same about VHS to DVD.)
How many people in this country participate in this little hobby of audio? How many people country wide have equipment that will let them know the difference?
When SCAD came out, it did not offer any convinence over what was already available. Look at this post at the number of people who say they can't hear a difference (which is mind boggling to me personally.)
This relegates SACD to a niche product for us anal rententive audiophiles. Will it continue to die, probably if manufacturers are basing its success on sales. Maybe it will go as the record, there will be limited production.
I don't think DVD-A will be any more successful for the same reasons. How much is this smallest segment of the population (audiophiles) worth to big business?
I think we should be worried if 2-ch will survive myself!

Bigtee, I agree. But I think video and the computer industry are what is driving everything. If there is improved sound with the blu-ray or hdvd, it will be entirely incidental. Both always need more storage capacity. I also think we will not regress to MP3 but only to cds, and given the vast improvement in the last several years in redbook reproduction, this is not too bad.

Dead as a doornail, practically/unfortunately. Thanks to Sony, et. al. (yeah, they had lots of help) it's almost all over but the shouting. They just haven't announced the time of the wake...

The first thing to remember is that it's a business - it's not really about the sound, it's all about selling units to consumers. The business plan and execution never made great sense, but the Sony name (along w/ some others) carried things pretty far, considering how much money was or wasn't changing hands. And with the relatively tiny numbers for SACD (and DVD-A) the only real hope is that a niche market survives. That will cater to the relatively few enthusiasts, but it will likely never reach the mass market numbers needed to make a real lasting go of it.

Like the comments earlier, it's the convenience that's #1. CDs went so far & fast because of the convenience - the fact that the sound was better than cassettes was an added bonus. And that's the bigger hint of why SACD is dead - you simply can't use 'em in your car. You can't play pure SACDs or the hi-rez level on hybrids, and anyway why would you want to (if you can't hear the difference at 60mph and your Yugo doesn't have 5-channel surround)? MP3 quality (no oxymoron jokes here, please) doesn't matter at 60mph, it's perceived as convenient, and so 99%+ of the population prefers MP3s to SACD. Add in the licensing greed/insanity, and you had a recipe for almost guaranteed demise.

The hottest consumer item around is the iPod (and similar MP3 players). Adequate quality for the 99% (that kinda defines a mass market ;~) in a convenient package, w/ great marketing - and everyone wants one. Can you buy a portable SACD player? A SACD burner? SACD iPod? Sorry, but SACDs (and their megabuck players) will be fading away as the unfortunate but logical outcome of a lot of lousy business decisions.