Phil A
Senior HTF Member
John, I'm quite aware of what is available for cars, my post above indicated "With DVD-V players (and a few DVD-A ones too) becoming more commonplace in mini-vans, sport-utes and other family vehicles ..." I've also posted some comments about the Acura DVD-A system. Pioneer has reasonable universal players for the home now and would expect in a few years they'll have a universal player of reasonable cost for the car.
As far as Sony electronics, it is obvious they have been a bit short-sighted of seeing the advantages of making the car buying public aware of the format. They evidently feel that (SACD) hybrids and whenever someone else gets around to a universal player is good enough. I don't agree with their priorities with regard to that (I've posted about that too), but it is their business.
My only point is that if all that is going to be accomplished by DVD-A flippers is to be able to play it in the car and they continue the mostly hi-rez back catalog stuff at the trickle its been, they're wasted a lot of time and effort for a market that is getting smaller (with DVD players and other technology becoming more common in cars and may end up causing bad press. For a format lagging behind in the release category, with a great library of available Warner stuff, they don't need to slow down things more. Look how few titles Warner has released since the formats inception (80-90 perhaps incl. related labels?). In another 3 years, the ability to play in a car CD player will be less important than today and who knows in another 6 years it might be a very small minority.
As far as Sony electronics, it is obvious they have been a bit short-sighted of seeing the advantages of making the car buying public aware of the format. They evidently feel that (SACD) hybrids and whenever someone else gets around to a universal player is good enough. I don't agree with their priorities with regard to that (I've posted about that too), but it is their business.
My only point is that if all that is going to be accomplished by DVD-A flippers is to be able to play it in the car and they continue the mostly hi-rez back catalog stuff at the trickle its been, they're wasted a lot of time and effort for a market that is getting smaller (with DVD players and other technology becoming more common in cars and may end up causing bad press. For a format lagging behind in the release category, with a great library of available Warner stuff, they don't need to slow down things more. Look how few titles Warner has released since the formats inception (80-90 perhaps incl. related labels?). In another 3 years, the ability to play in a car CD player will be less important than today and who knows in another 6 years it might be a very small minority.