Issue with the wife regarding DVD-A or CD (1 Viewer)

[anthony_b]

Background:
I was at Best Buy yesterday picking up some DVD's with the wife, and she went to the music section to pick up the SAY YOU WILL Fleetwood Mac CD, so I suggested to pick up the DVD-A for $1 more and I told her that it was in 5.1 and it was recorded in HI-REZ. Then she asked if it would play in the car ?...I said NO, then she said "I don't want it then !!" ...

Which brought me to this question : How many sales do you think DVD-A has loss due to the format not being portable ?

 

[Justin Lane]

Which brought me to this question : How many sales do you think DVD-A has loss due to the format not being portable ?

As far as Hi-res music goes, DVD-A at this point is the only format that has portable options for true Hi-res playback (Hybrid redbook layers are not Hi-res). There are both portable and car head units as well as factory installed option for DVD-A. I really do not consider your wife a lost sale because she had no clue that DVD-A was an option in the first place, and without your information, she would have never even considered DVD-A and bought the CD anyway. This is an issue with marketing though, and belongs in another thread. You should buy the new Fleetwood Mac disc for yourself though, as it is a very nice recording.

That being said, neither SACD or DVD-A have been effective in marketing their format as being portable. With DVD maturing as a format, I think it is about time we see DVD as a common an offering as CD in car head units. The chipsets are cheap, and we can buy players for the home as low as 50 bucks so it is really just up to the manufacturers to implement further Hi-res capability. I see no reason why there couldn't be audio only walkman like DVD-A players offered for a hundred bucks or less. I have no comments on SACD potable capability, as there has yet to be even one portable player on the market. If a Universal car head unit came down the pike and the price was not too ridiculous (

 

[Lee Scoggins]

I think your wife may prefer Super Audio hybrids which would play in the car, but not at high resolution.

I suspect we will see Super Audio mobile units before long, particularly now that combined DSD/PCM chips for universals are coming and are inexpensive.

I have only seen a Pioneer car DVDA player so far, so the hirez options in general are limited.

It is hard to say how many sales have been lost by either format as the car market has not really been targeted so far.

The car is a pretty good environment for 5.1 sound ironically as acoustics and systems can be custom tailored for the interior dimensions and absorptive properties of the materials in the seats, etc. The Lexus Levinson systems and others take these into account.

 

[Thomas Newton]

That being said, neither SACD or DVD-A have been effective in marketing their format as being portable.

Perhaps this has something to do with both systems being designed specifically in ways that break Fair Use.

If DVD-A discs had no CSS-like scrambling, and format converters were readily available for all major computer platforms, he could buy the DVD-A disc, put it into a computer, and burn a Red Book Audio CD-R version of that DVD-A disc for his wife's car. He would get his "hi-rez" disc, his wife would gets a version she can play in the car, and the store would get to sell the more expensive disc AND a blank CD.

 

[Justin Lane]

If DVD-A discs had no CSS-like scrambling, and format converters were readily available for all major computer platforms, he could buy the DVD-A disc, put it into a computer, and burn a Red Book Audio CD-R version of that DVD-A disc for his wife's car. He would get his "hi-rez" disc, his wife would gets a version she can play in the car, and the store would get to sell the more expensive disc AND a blank CD.

Problem with both SACD and DVD-A is there is still the analog hole. Feeding the CD burner in your component rack the analog output from your Hi-res player will still allow you to make a very very good copy that may even exceed the official CD copy in quality due to newer/better mastering used on the Hi-res track.

This would probably be the best solution for Anthony. By the Hi-res DVD-A, make a copy on his burner, and give his wife the copy. He gets the Hi-res at home and she gets a nice sounding CD without having to bring the DVD-A into the car where it is more likely to get scratched up.

J

 

[Angelo.M]

Then she asked if it would play in the car ?...I said NO, then she said "I don't want it then !!" ...

This situation is one of the examples I used in our other thread about "hi-rez acceptance," and points to one of the reasons why I believe hi-rez is going to remain a small niche market for a long time to come. As far as DVD-A/SACD capability for your car, well mp3 capability seems to have badly beat it to the punch. It's massive low-rez storage that most folks want (I'm guilty, having picked up the [very nice, by the way] Alpine 9807).

 

[Lee Scoggins]

points to one of the reasons why I believe hi-rez is going to remain a small niche market for a long time to come

I am not sure that the auto market determines whether the hirez formats will be in a niche. I think the hardware makers would have brought out product sooner if that were the case.

 

[Doug_H]

I have a DVD-A player in the car and I love it. I was also having a problem justifying my DVD-a purchases and needing to buy the CD as well. When I cam e across a Panasonic car deck with DVD-A and a small but helpful center channel built in I jumped on it.

 

[Rich Malloy]

Doug, how flexible is the calibration for your DVD-A player? Does it sound good from most seats, or just the driver's?

 

[Doug_H]

Doug, how flexible is the calibration for your DVD-A player? Does it sound good from most seats, or just the driver's?

I have a small 2 seat convertable so it was easy to set up and sounds great from both seats. For a larger car you caould easily set it up for good sound in the front seats but the back seats are not going to get good seperation.

also consider that know matter how much you want it too a car will never sound as good as the home system. DVD-A does sound much better than CD even in the car however.

I use the center channel built into the head unit and it is alright for me but in a bigger car you would probably want to use a better speaker.

It decodes DTS as well so I can carry all of my DTS discs and this is a nice bonus.

Overall I really like the player and the sound is very good compared to redbook but again, it isn't as good as the home system

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Is there a 'phantom center' mode? I'd probably rather have no center at all than a crappy one.

 

[Doug_H]

You can turn the center off and I tried this but found the center added enough to leave it on. It is pretty good at handeling vocals but not much else.

 

[Angelo.M]

I am not sure that the auto market determines whether the hirez formats will be in a niche.

Lee, my post didn't say that at all. It said that this type of situation is one piece of evidence ("points to one of the reasons") that hi-rez acceptance will not become widespread anytime soon. In no way did I say or imply that the auto market "determines" anything with regard to the status of the hi-rez market. It is simply one of many indices that we can use, particularly since low-rez has, relatively quickly, found wide penetration into the auto head-unit market.

Folks are into portability of large volumes of music, hence the boom of iPod and similar devices. Folks want to rip their redbooks and carry 1000 songs around. Folks want 3000 songs on their laptops. Do they want hi-rez? Maybe, maybe not. Other than a select few, a niche, I don't think so.

Anyway, we've been through this discussion before, and we agree to disagree. I say the acceptance has already arrived, and isn't going to grow geometrically anytime soon, if ever. You see the possibility. OK, cool, I'm jumping out of the pool...

 

[Lee Scoggins]

points to one of the reasons why I believe hi-rez is going to remain a small niche market for a long time to come

I guess I feel that "a long time to come" is awefully negative given how fast things change in today's world.

In any event, I think we will eventually see a gradual filtering of hirez into cars. Again, it seems that it is possible that both formats become de facto inclusions on future universal capable machines. I think this is possible since the universal chips are soon going to be quite cheap.

 

[Angelo.M]

Lee: I absolutely agree. I think companies like Pioneer, Onkyo, Denon and others are going to extend the trend toward cheap(er) universal players for the home. How quickly this results in a larger market share for hi-rez is hard to predict. Certainly, Pioneer is in an excellent position to bring universal playback to car audio.

The only problem will be putting all those format logos on the head units! I can see it now: the Pioneer Universal Head Unit, with mp3/WMA/DVD-A/DVD-V/CD/SACD/HDCD.. Ah, what the heck, throw Ogg Vorbis in there as well!

 

[TheLongshot]

I guess I feel that "a long time to come" is awefully negative given how fast things change in today's world.

Considering the trend is for lesser quality formats, and the general user doesn't care about the difference, I don't really see it changing in the near future.

Jason

 

[MarkHastings]

It said that this type of situation is one piece of evidence ("points to one of the reasons") that hi-rez acceptance will not become widespread anytime soon.

I agree with you Angelo. I myself understand how great a DVD-A sounds over a CD, but since I don't have a DVD-A player in my car (which I spend almost 12 hours per week commuting in), I can not say that I am ready to start buying DVD-A's over CD's.

Actually, what I'll do is buy both versions so the whole idea about DVD-A sales being hurt over their "not being portable", falls short with me

And yes, I am one who listend to my MP3 player in my car. I'd rather have 40GB of music in one little box than to cart around hundreds of DVD-A's (fumbling around with the cases while I drive on I-95 :frowning

 

[ElevSkyMovie]

Hopefully dvde-a will have a redbook layer soon and you won't have to buy the music twice. What will the recording idustry do if we buy an album once and never buy it again in another format?

 

[anthony_b]

My wife, plays her favorite CD's while she's commuting to work an hour each way, so DVD-A was not an option for her. That kind of sucks because, I don't see myself making two purchases for the same music. If it were me, I'd buy the dvd-a or the single layer SACD (If the hybrid were not available)to listen at home. I think she had a valid reason for purchasing the CD because during her commute to work is when she listens to most of her music. I just would like to add that I own machines that play both formats, I wish DVD-A would go hybrid some day.

 

[Jack Briggs]

I'm sitting here wanting to make this discussion different somehow. But I'm drawing a blank. Instead of wallowing in the same back-and-forth pattern these threads tend to spiral into, let's go somewhere else.

The way to do it is to point to the bigger issue, which has always been there.

For example, back in the day when I was deciding between a pair of Rectilinear IIIs or Acoustic Research AR-3as hobbyist audio was as fringe-level a pursuit as building radio-controlled airplanes. For most people, it was something they had heard about or even heard for themselves. It was strictly a niche.

Most people listened to portable "record players" or huge "stereo consoles."

The same attitude exists today with serious audio. It's not a common pursuit.

And the mass market has a lot of power.