As far as the Space Shuttle is concerned, how can something be obsolete when there is nothing newer or better to replace it? Some of the technology used inside of the shuttle may be obsolete, but the actual shuttle itself? I don't see anything else flying up in space doing what it is doing... not yet.

Going by your argument , everything on the planet is obsolete once something (anything) newer has arrived.

-My older sister was rendered obsolete once I was born.
-T120 videotapes became obsolete when the newer T160 tapes came out (even though you may not always need nor desire to pay for 160 minute tapes).
-Airplanes have made trains, ships and cars obsolete as a form of travel.
-New Coke made regular Coke obsolete.

And of course:
-DLP has already rendered film obsolete (before DLP was ever shown publicly).

This is fun

Actually Joe there is the X-33 program. However, It was canceled due to poor management of the design. It was in the early testing phase when it was canceled and was canceled only due to fuel tank problems. However each shuttle is designed for 100 flights so look for NASA to be flying them for about the next 20 years. The shuttles will probably fly along with the new technology when it is developed and ready. And yes, the present Shuttles airframe is obsolete, and has been rendered so by the normal technological growth of the aircraft industry that designed it. If they built new ones much of it would now be carbon fibre... like the 777's rudder and floor joists are. But thats a minor example.

He also said....
"Going by your argument , everything on the planet is obsolete once something (anything) newer has arrived. "

Thats partially correct Joe. Just one thing arriving can't make everything obsolete, its usually one on one. It also doesn't mean that the older technology will be discontinued right away.

And he said.....
"Airplanes have made trains, ships and cars obsolete as a form of travel."

Your right again!
Plane travel has all but killed rail travel. It did kill ship travel first. One of those is on display as a mueseum piece in Long Beach. The shamble of rail travel system that is left will also soon be on display in a museum along with alot of other rail travel stuff that already is.

Also....
-New Coke made regular Coke obsolete.
I think this was a mistake by the dudes at Coke. It was a total failure, but they did try to obsolete regular Coke and discontinue producing it. Probably cause of some expensive ingredient that they were able to leave out of "New Coke"

And..."My older sister was rendered obsolete once I was born."

Well, You were actually "In Addition" to your older sister sort of like the Discovery and Endeavor were "In Addition to the Columbia after it was rolled out.....I doubt that your sister was "rolled out though". T-160's were also in addition to T-120's.....allows recording time to fit your needs and has nothing to do with obsolence.

This is fun!

I don't know what Mac has up their sleves but from what you are saying it sounds to me like they are and have always been building obsolete computers. Just cause the G-4 chips are still produced doesn't make them not obsolete. Western Electric for instance still makes the 300B vacuum tube because it can be marketed and sold, but mainly to Audio Tubeheads. And no, Vacuum tubes are not completely obsolete but they will be on the near horizon. Even final PA's in ultra high power transmitters are all solid state now, and have been for some time. There are way too many dangerous and unreyclable materials used in manufacturing some types of vacuum tubes....beryllium oxide for example and CRT's are very dangerous in particuluar.
Mark @ GTS

All I can say is ... "Damn."

Joe, You're forgetting that high quality analog can actually surpass many digital systems especially if there was type A or SR encoding used. Many of the analog recordings that were made back into the 50's are astounding to say the least. Still audibly surpassing the quality of most of the early digital recording systems. DVD audio lets you hear exactly how good the original recording is..or isn't. New recordings made in the format are unbelievable to say the least.

You didn't answer my question! First of all I know that analog recordings kick all ass when done properly. But I asked how can they make the new versions sound so good when they couldn't even make the CD versions sound as good as normal CDs usually do.

Also, you completely evaded my queries about HDCD and Super CD. This means that I must automatically assume that you are not confident of how good the obsolete DVD-A format sounds in comparison to these other two obsolete formats.

Do you know what the specs are for

DVD-A
HDCD
Super CD?

I am under the impression (illusion?) that DVD-A wins in the amount of data given for the audio signal and theoretically can sound the best of the three formats.

Now we just need DVD-A recorders for consumers. I don't know what they'd record other than live sound but it would be fun for people like me.

Also, why does everyone think that Audio CDs are only capable of holding 650 MBs? That's absurd, actually. A 74 minute CD holds approximately 740 MB of audio. Even if the 74 minute CD-R you are burning says 650 MB Max you are still putting 740 megs of audio on the disc (assuming that you fill it up). In fact, I burned a CD last night with 98 minutes and 38 seconds of audio. I had all of the audio files on the computer before burning (ripped from other CDs) and the size of all the audio files on that disc combined is 990.9 MB. That's not even counting the lead-in and lead out tracks which take up a few megs of space each, nor the 2 second spacing between each track which would take 2.8 megabits each -- at 33 tracks that's 11.55 more megabytes. So I have here an audio CD that has nearly 1 Gig of info on it if not more. And yes, it plays properly in all CD players that I have tried... even old ones. Kick ass!

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Unless your surround controller or receiver takes that analog 5.1 input and directly routes it to the amplifiers, you will get a generational loss of quality when the receiver or controller tries to process the signal. The becomes greater if the receiver converts the signal back into the digital realm. To add to this problem, I don't think any DVD Audio players have yet been able to include any bass management for the MLP mode inside the DVD player. So if you don't have a very high end set of speakers capable of really deep bass out of the mains, you are going to be kind of screwed.

DVD Audio should have been able to incorporate the IEEE-1394 Firewire digital output standard. While the DVD players and A-V receivers like 1934 I/O, I'm not spending a bunch to upgrade my current home theater setup.

My feeling is that DVD Audio (as well as SACD) are doing really poorly. Those formats are far far overshadowed by MP3 and personal/portable MP3 music players. CD burning is a very big thing. I have lots of dubbed CDs and custom mixed CDs. To me, it is more fun to be able to mix together a few customized discs for a party than it is to just sit and listen to an MLP disc that has no other use than that static purpose.

What is with CD-R anyway? I may have asked this before, but if I rip a track from a CD and burn it to another CD (without tampering with the file) the audio becomes much LOUDER with each passing generation, often introducing distortion. Audio CDRs are NOT perfect dupes... at least not with standard CD-R equipment. And yes, this happens even if I burn the entire audio CD to an image file first, instead of WAV/AIFF.

If your home audio system needs "bass management" then it is probably not good enough for DVD Audio anyway. The signal should not go straight through to the amplifiers. It could sound very harsh that way. What if you took an SDDS unit, hooked it straight to the amps and did not touch the EQ settings (leaving it perfectly flat)? Or passed the analog sound from the film through the Dolby SR noise reduction and then straight to the amps (no EQ)? It would sound horrible! If you have DVD-A, you probably already have a really good preamp that is capable of running a good EQ and passing it along, all in the analog stage. Digital EQs can suck my ass.... well they can be pretty good, but they're just not as flexible. But I agree that a lot of home receivers convert all incoming audio into 44.1khz 16-Bit (some of them 24-bit) PCM and then fiddle with the audio in that realm. That would indeed destroy the advantages of DVD-A.