HDTV Forum

The music industry is expending huge amounts of money and human attention to screw up our CDs so they won't play on our PCs.

Meanwhile, SACD and DVD-Audio are practically dying on the vine.

Wouldn't it be great if the four major record companies spent at least as much effort developing these new high-resolution formats as they've wasted on ridiculous copy-prevention schemes?

I've got two little words for anyone who thinks the CD-copying genie can be put back in the bottle: ANALOG OUTPUTS.

But imagine a world where the number of new SACD and DVD-A releases increased exponentially. Consumers would be able to enjoy fidelity that even the good ol' LP can't match (minus the surface noise). And the industry itself would have us all replacing our Beatles albums in a new format. (Of course the Stones are already coming to SACD ... and it's about time.)

I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about why the music industry has ignored SACD and DVD-A. I think I've figured it out: They simply don't want to make money. There must be a new kind of non-materialistic record executive out there.

Shareholders, it's time to write a letter asking why your favorite titles are not on DVD-A or SACD. Stock analysts, it's time to start asking hard questions about companies that ignore golden opportunities to make money. Let the war for high-resolution audio begin.

Mark Fleischmann

I've got two little words for anyone who thinks the CD-copying genie can be put back in the bottle: ANALOG OUTPUTS.

I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about why the music industry has ignored SACD and DVD-A. I think I've figured it out: They simply don't want to make money. There must be a new kind of non-materialistic record executive out there.

Here's another consideration, if SACD adn DVD-A were to take off, we would quickly find that the size of the original digital information would become completely impractical to just swap freely on the internet. There has never been any problem with the public's ability to record songs off broadcast radio, why is MP3 and such that much different? Probably because the quality is close enough for much of the general public. Make the sold format noticably better than the copying medium and people will have some incentive to buy. I don't know about others out there, but I wish I had the time to make endless CDs packed full of MP3s for casual use in the car and such. The fact is that most who have the money to spend on lots of CDs, etc. don't have time to download and copy everything off the internet. Most of those copying, would never have the means to buy all of the music they download. Now there's a perplexing issue...

Regards,

Mark Seaton
Sound Physics Labs/ ServoDrive

Hi Mark. Long time.

I've got two little words for anyone who thinks the CD-copying genie can be put back in the bottle: ANALOG OUTPUTS.

Speaking of analog music copying, component Audio CD Recorders have complied with SCMS for years. But that doesn't make it hard to copy CDs. Most models have an internal analog mode that offers virtually automatic copying of SCMS "don't copy" flagged discs from Tray A to Tray B. When the unit detects an SCMS "don't copy" signal, it just shifts into analog mode and internally buses the audio from Tray A to Tray B as analog signal. With some units, it's hard to even tell the difference between these analog copies and digital ones. No patch cables required.

As for the industry's Quixotic attempts to copy protect CDs, I'm still not at all convinced that this silly movement will last long. If consumers refuse to accept something, it's doomed to fail. Seems obvious, but the record biz seems to ignore this basic principle. The media will always jump all over a Chicken Little story such as this. <p> Speaking of other industry mis-predictions, remember how the price of CD-R was certain to RISE 50% last year? Yeah, right. And I have a bridge ...

And wow--how stupid are they? I mean, the industry spends millions developing a copy protection scheme that some kid with a Sharpie can disable.

NatW[/quote]