It is a shame that surround music has fared so poorly in the marketplace, especially since many of the reasons for its failure were preventable. DVD-Audio and SACD both came to market at around the same time. The two competing formats both offered high-resolution audio, with surround standard on DVD-Audio from the get-go and added to SACD in short order as a reaction to DVD-A. The format war led to confusion in the marketplace, especially when the average consumer was quite content with the CD. Then there was over-zealous copy protection on both formats that prevented digital audio output during the formative years of both formats, leaving us forced to use multichannel analog connections and making it very difficult to own players for both formats. Digital output options exist for both now, but IEEE-1394 never saw hardware support because it couldn't support both formats until both had basically settled into "niche" status (at best) in the marketplace and HDMI has had its own share of problems achieving presence in hardware. And of course it didn't help that studio support was spotty and many stores never offered much selection.