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page Having two rival technologies sometimes results in more choice for the end buyer. In this case, though, it merely fractured the record and audio hardware industries, since the two disc formats are entirely incompatible. Until recently, an SACD player only played SACDs (and regular CDs), while a DVD-Audio player only played DVD-A (and regular DVD video and music CDs). The recent smattering of hybrid machines that play both, for example from Pioneer, has not really brought peace between rival formats. Total War In 2003, we now have a format war between these two new high-resolution music formats. Which is better, and which will win? At Hi-Fi News, we watch the shifting balance of power, as first one format announces a new adoption by this manufacturer, this record label, or that recording studio; and then the other format answers with its own volley of successes. The sad truth is that the division serves only to confuse the potential buyer, often leading to a postponement of any new purchase, ‘until the battle dies down a bit’. Some hi-fi product manufacturers have grasped the opportunity to appease early-adopting (although both formats are over four years old now... ) music enthusiasts by making a machine that will play both types of disc, but these are the exception rather than the rule. One thing that is becoming clearer, however, is that so long as one of the two formats ultimately gains the upper hand, then the record industry will have won the war. Copy-proofing Both new high-resolution formats were ‘sold’ to the record industry with two important intentions. The first was to revive an industry complaining of diminishing sales of its product (the Compact Disc), with something novel. The music boom of the 1980s was in part due to many people buying their record collection all over again, on the new digital format; but that novelty has since disappeared. The film industry, meanwhile, had one of its greatest shots in the arm in the late 1990s with the introduction of DVD video, a runaway success story which continues today. The second motive for a new music format was security. The Compact Disc is a format that can be easily copied nowadays, to a blank CD-R, or compressed to MP3, allowing easy distribution over the internet. To succeed in winning over the record industry, the creators of both DVD-A and SACD had to gain the trust of the music business by making a disc that could not be copied. And that is the principal raison d’etre of both these new discs. The digital outputs once fitted to many CD players will no longer be necessary, as the music and hardware industries have conspired to make sure that no music will be available in raw digital form. There is no way to play an SACD disc on a computer, so the potential for ‘rippping’ here is, at the moment at least, negligible. final page>> |