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Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-15-2008 03:10 PM
quote: Frank Angel
So, Bobby, is there any sense that Blu-ray will eventually be the format for everything -- audio-only and movies?
Blu-ray Disc certainly has the physical/technical capability of being a "universal disc format" for many different purposes.
Currently, Blu-ray Disc is used for storing pre-recorded HD-quality programming and movies, Playstation 3 games and can be used for computer data storage. That's already a good range of uses.
However, most of the music industry, especially the more popular genres of music, are mired in the dark ages in terms of product sophistication. They can keep on using standard music CD because their production standards are so primitive and crude that there's currently no point in moving up to something better.
I've repeated my complaints of the badly over-driven nature of popular music today. It's like they're just pushing all the faders on the mixing console to the top with all the meters bleeding into the red. Clipping doesn't seem to be much of an issue these days. They just want it loud, even if it sounds like shit. Who cares? Everyone is going to be listening to it on some iPod or other MP3 player compressed to hell.
There could be some hope on the horizon.
Big improvements are being made in flash memory technology and solid state hard discs. Capacities are going to start growing by some big leaps over the next couple of years. By the end of this decade an average iPod could feature over 100GB of solid state capacity. The massive increases in data capacity will lessen the relevance of using severely lossy audio compression formats.
Some performers who do more to push the limits of audio technology with music can also influence industry shifts to support Blu-ray as a music delivery format.
Trent Reznor has released a new, all instrumental Nine Inch Nails album called Ghosts I-IV. It features 36 songs and is the first half of an 8 part series. He's made a number of these tracks available to download free from the NIN web site. Reznor is also making available a special limited edition of the music. The $75 item includes 2 CDs containing the songs in standard CD format, 1 DVD featuring original multi-track files that you can use to remix and a Blu-ray Disc featuring the music in 2 channel 24-bit 96kHz audio with on screen graphics. It also includes a coffee table type book with artsy photography. A bonus item with the set includes a one time free download of all the music in your choice of portable formats (AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, etc.). The files are DRM free.
I've had high praise for Reznor's willingness to embrace formats like SACD and DualDisc for past music releases. He's certainly setting another very positive example for other music performers to follow.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-15-2008 06:48 PM
Mike, you obviously don't see the "chicken vs. egg" thing involved in this issue. The customer is not to blame at all. The failure of SACD and DVD-A is entirely the fault of the music industry.
Most people who buy popular music are pretty young. The music labels selling content on SACD did next to nothing to market high resolution audio to the biggest music buying demographic. They supplied next to nothing in terms of titles that demographic would have been interested in buying.
Outside of The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails and a scattering of a few other titles that were already several years old as well, mainstream music performers have been completely absent from supplying content.
What makes anyone believe the average 20 to 30 year old person would be even the slightest bit interested in SACDs made from old rock albums from the 1970s? Some of that stuff being sold is music my parents listened to when I was in elementary school. The biggest demographic of music buyers are not going to buy that crap regardless of how it's packaged.
Go back over the last several years since SACD and DVD-A were introduced. Look through the top selling music albums of those last several years. You probably will not find any of those top selling titles available in any multichannel format, much less something high res like SACD or DVD-A.
The notion that young people rejected SACD and DVD-A over iPods is frankly really damned stupid. It ignores the very obvious point that the music labels didn't make the slightest effort to give SACD or DVD-A any chance at all to succeed. They didn't supply any current, new titles from current, new, popular music acts. Instead, they gave us a bunch of old-ass 30 year old classic rock albums, jazz stuff and classical music. Every new audio or video format lives and dies by the quality of titles available to it.
What the music industry did with SACD and DVD-A would be the equivalent of the movie industry launching Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD using nothing but a bunch of black and white movies from the 1930s and 1940s.
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