Soundhound,

Love your insight into this topic. I could not agree more.

Sanjay,

To me the digital interface is not a red herring. It is in fact one of the key reasons that I refuse to support these formats. I do not accept that in this digital age, new formats should force a consumer to "dummy-down" to analogue, especially when the "software" is in digital form. So to partially answer your question, yes I would give these formats a more serious glance if there was a universal digital connection available.

To further answer the question let me first note three characteristics of the formats that you have raised, namely: 1. the catalogues are limited; 2. software is overpriced; and 3. they are of dubious benefit.

I don't have enough knowledge to comment on the first bullet except to say that I have read some reviews of some titles / recordings that certainly seem appealing. At this stage it's not what's stopping me from adopting these formats. I was an early adopter of DVD - when DIVX was still creating loads of marketplace confusion and sales had not yet taken off. (I was also into HD, satellite, laserdisc, and S-VHS on the relative front end of the curves as well.) So the limited availability of titles (if true), while a consideration, is not such a big deal to me.

However bullets 2 (price) and 3 (benefit) certainly are considerations - as mentionned in my original post. A digital connection, with disk prices the same as CDs (in Canada - where we pay far less, in equivalent $US, than south of the 49th) would probably make a convert out of me, despite the "dubious benefit" - based on my past history with new technologies.

Regards.

Jeff Mackwood

ps. this reply gives me a chance to correct an error in my original posting. In it I claimed to have a DTS 5.1 music recording in DVD format. Sorry - that was incorrect. It's in CD format. Which proves my original point in even stronger terms. I can play that recording through my 15 year old CD and laserdisc players (or through any of my DVD players), through their digital outputs, and enjoy fabulous sound (as decoded by my Model 950) right now. So we can already have multi-channel, high quality, great sounding music, on CD, that will play on all existing DVD players, and probably most CD players (in multi-channel set-ups), without having to go to SACD or DVD-Audio. So why do we really need these new formats?