Rachael B

I wish I could have Derek Truks over a few nights a week to play for me.

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

Angelo.M

Rachael B

Angelo, I miss reel to reel. I sold my last one, a really nice Akai about 4 years ago. Now that I live in larger digs I wish I had it back. Hi-rez would make sweet tapes, me thinks.

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

Chu Gai

Ummmm...no.

Yee-Ming

When I saw the title of the thread, I thought you guys were discussing the physical medium, rather than the recording/encoding format. Anyway, as previously said, probably not in the next 15-20 years.

But during that period, someone's going to come up with the music equivalent of a thumb-drive, encoded in some hi-res format (whether current SACD/DVD-A, or some new future format), with re-recordable versions available, and with portable players incorporated into small devices such as mobile phones. At that time, the attraction will be that you can have your album -- or should that be your favourite two dozen albums or so -- on one tiny chip that slots into your mobile phone, playing back hi-res quality music while on the go, or you plug the same chip into your tricked-out hifi system for absolute maximum sonic quality that replicates "being there".

An entire collection taking up several bookcases would now fit into one shoebox.

Oh well. Who knows?

Rachael B

Yee-Ming, it's not that the kind of things that you mention can't happen. The thing is that the public is locked into a power struggle against the bIG 5 muszak kompanies. It's likely that the natural evolution of the market will be retarded, atleast some, maybe alot. There are alot of great comments on this thread, including your's, but the muzak companies will try to negate progress if it suits their desires...their desire to hamper home/self recording. As more musicans go independent, that could change things? Then the market could go around the obsolete kompanies. However, they control an awful lot of very popular stuff. That's how I see it anyway.

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

favourite saying: hard feelings are for park benches... sit on that!

Thomas Newton

There are already music players that are enhanced USB keychain flash drives. Their capacity isn't anywhere near the 512 MB required to hold 12 albums in even a lossy, compressed (128 Kbps MP3) format, but it's getting there.

The thing is, even if a tiny chip held a few thousand gigabytes (enough for a moderate-size collection encoded as CD/DVD-A/SACD style digital audio), I would not want to have only a single tiny chip that held all of my purchased albums. It would be WAY too easy to lose that chip, and the collection.

I think I'd rather have three or four "standard-form-factor" flash drives: one for the home stereo, one for the car, one for a Walkman-style device, etc. I don't see any real incompatibility between listening to music on a flash / HD player (for increased portability), and buying it on a harder-to-lose medium such as a CD or a DVD-ROM.