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Are formats doomed by Corporate greed?


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Just musing about the different formats that seem to take off in Europe or Japan, but lag terribly in the US. DCC...excellent sound, in fact many claimed it to be superior to DAT....dead on arrival. Minidisc, huge in Japan...the data MD's are so overpriced that nobody went that direction....and the end is near, maybe. Now we have DVD, and many are predicting it's demise. Is this about corporate greed? The only reason I suggest this is Corporate America's refusal to promote them.

Reminds me of the old argument why we don't see alternate fuel or energy because of the supposed stranglehold from fossil fuel corporations. There's plenty of argument here folks.......shoot........

Down like a dollar comin up against a yen, doin pretty good for the shape I'm in
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Originally posted by strat0124:

Just musing about the different formats that seem to take off in Europe or Japan, but lag terribly in the US. DCC...excellent sound, in fact many claimed it to be superior to DAT....dead on arrival. Minidisc, huge in Japan...the data MD's are so overpriced that nobody went that direction....and the end is near, maybe. Now we have DVD, and many are predicting it's demise. Is this about corporate greed? The only reason I suggest this is Corporate America's refusal to promote them.

Reminds me of the old argument why we don't see alternate fuel or energy because of the supposed stranglehold from fossil fuel corporations. There's plenty of argument here folks.......shoot........

 

I'm not sure why anyone would claim that DCC is superior to DAT, when DCC uses data-compression & DAT does not. -unless of course you like the sound of data-compression.

 

-Hippie

In two days, it won't matter.
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Just wondering why those formats are in major stall, or slow death.

The whole data compression thing is intriguing....just wondering how much it matters to Joe Sixpack's home studio, maybe to the high end folk looking at waveforms. I would gander to say, that most folks can't tell the diff. I've seen the reviews that say show waveforms and critical data of the tests, and I'm sure there are subtle differences in sound. That brings a whole nother discussion....about how much is perception alone, or preconceived based on the press. I personally think some genre's may even sound better on minidisc. But as someone said, maybe it's because I like that sound....

SO.......who's killing the formats? Consumers? Retailers? or the great evil...Corporations????

Down like a dollar comin up against a yen, doin pretty good for the shape I'm in
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I don't think that rational thought regarding formats is impossible. Companies just have to realize that cooperation is more profitable. One of the big issues in the DVD discussions seems to be copy protection. As long as hackers are bent on copying and reselling intelectual property, the companies that invest in the creation of that property have to find ways to protect themselves.

 

By the way, I don't subscribe to the idea of corporate greed. Greed is an attribute of human beings, not legal entities. A greedy corporation is a corporation run by greedy people.

 

Furthermore, corporations aren't the only negative influences. Organizations made up of musicians and composers lobbied against DAT technology. So an equally accurate title for this thread might be "Are formats doomed by greedy musicians?"

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Hmmmm... By introducing the CD format, the record companies re-sold millions of titles from their catalogs, making corresponding millions of dollars more (how many CD versions of your favorite vinyl do you have in YOUR collection? I'm scared to count...). I would think, if I were a greedy corporation, every couple years I'd intentionally introduce a new format that's "ten times better than your vinyl/DAT/CD/DVD/BubbleMemory/whathaveyou. Just my 2-cents.

Botch

"Eccentric language often is symptomatic of peculiar thinking" - George Will

www.puddlestone.net

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I don't think that doom for formats comes from straight out greed, but more from lack of cooperation. For example, SACD vs. DVD-A. I don't think that either format is DOA (as a certain regular on this board claims), but I DO think that there is a large potential for the market for both formats to be harmed. Instead of cooperating and creating a standard for one disc that does everything and plays on one kind of player, both camps dug their trenches and refused to move. The result is a splintering in the market that could potentially hurt both sides.

 

At this time, I don't think there is enough data to definitely say that either or both formats is doomed to failure. I am very interested to see what happens as one, or the other, or both become household names and consumers have some idea of what they are. (Of course, there's another issue. It doesn't seem that the average consumer really knows about either format, or at least, not in any detail.)

 

-Danny

 

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Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

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I think DCC failed because it was tape-based, and tape had pretty much run its course in this country.

 

MD failed because the players are extremely expensive compared to cassettes, and people had already gotten used to the idea of portable CD players. Remember too that Japan is a very crowded country; the space savings of MD are considerable.

 

In the US, just as MD was starting to be felt, the MP3 players came long which promised no moving parts. Personally, I find MD a wonderful format for many applications; I'm constantly surprised by how many people on these boards use them.

 

As to DVD vs SACD, with SACD Sony would still make royalties from the format, as it is tied to standard CDs. They wouldn't with DVDs. Frankly, though, I think the SACD process sounds really good.

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Originally posted by strat0124:

Now we have DVD, and many are predicting it's demise. Is this about corporate greed? .....

 

No, it's corporate misunderstanding of current sociology and inability to move quick enough.

 

Things are too fractionalized now. It's not like you can merely put out the "Top 10" acts out in a new format and have it work. That's not enough, it has to be instantly ubiquitous - consumers are too jaded, if everything isn't immediately available NOW it's flawed.

 

That's why I harp on the "all car stereos must be made 5.1 capable", or DVDA capable. It will have to be a thing where Joe Smoe goes "Hey... you know.. I think my new Kenwood does that 5.1 thing, maybe I should try it" - while he's looking at a display of an artist's recording in 5.1 at Best Buy. It has to be THERE right NOW with out a hassle.

 

It can't work completely like CD's did. When CD's were initially pushed, it was easy - for the most part you had rock music, and little classical and jazz. A lot of record stores didn't have country sections (remember that?), much less rap, electronica, Brit pop, reggae, salsa, trip-hop, blues, Americana, classic rock, fusion, new age, ambient, evironmental... etc. Now days it's like having 25 versions of the one major category you had back then, and you have to treat it that way or else it will never happen.

 

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