#Music CD/SBP Audio Prob.
9 messages in this thread
If you're not familiar with laser discs then your statements have a nice
ring, but the fact is that laserdiscs provide about 70% more scan lines of true
video than the best VHS, effectively direct broadcast monitor quality video, as
well as (in the best of them) true CD 44Khz sound.
Laserdiscs sell to people who want to own and collect movies and musical
performances, and this is a demanding audience. I seriously doubt that this
audience would move down a notch in video or audio quality, which is what the
system you describe would require, nor would the current tape audience switch
to a new format that will give them little better than they have on their
tapes. Even Super VHS never really took off.
It is difficult to describe the laserdisc without showing it and listening
to it. Laserdiscs not only have superb quality pictures and sound, but allow
all sorts of image manipulation, carry both pure digital and analog tracks on
which often different things are recorded (the director commenting on each
scene, etc.) and additional material that is accessed in ways more common to
what CD ROM can do and what Video for Windows and Quicktime only hope to
someday come close to doing. To replace the laserdisc in the current market,
you need more than a smaller disk; you need a better laserdisc.
Jack,
Just a few thoughts about the points raised by you and Bruce.
>LD quality. Agreed. No contest between LD and the reports coming back about
Nimbus video. However, while the videophiles will rightly reject an inferior
medium, I'm not so sure this will be as important to a mass market. I happen to
think LP sounds better than CD and Beta was superior to VHS. However, one is
more convienient and the other was better marketed. If, and it's a big if,
Nimbus gets their system off the ground (the software/hardware availability
Catch-22 is a big one) then I think questions of quality will be secondary to
those of convenience to the average consumer. How often do you visit someone's
home and notice that their TV picture color balance is grossly off? They don't
notice it. Enthusiasts do, but average folks don't mind. If the Nimbus system
is more or less equal to present tape technology, its superior access speed
alone will kill tape. The far bigger impediment in my view is the problem Bruce
raises with regard to software/hardware availability.
Finally, if there are enough enthusiasts buying LD, it will continue. And I
have to say, I hope there are and it will!
Don
No, I think you miss the point here. Tape rentals are the big money in home
movies; purchases even now, save for the very cheap promotions (i.e. Beauty and
the Beast for $16.95 with rebate…) are a very small percentage of the market,
while in laserdiscs the vast majority are purchased and there are limited
rental outlets in any case.
For a medium to overtake VHS it would have to offer significant
improvements at a price the public was willing to pay and the rental market was
willing to accept. Now, if someone were to bring out affordable RERECORDABLE
video laser disks at a price not too much of a premium above VHS tape, I'd say
they'd have something as a consumer medium, but what I've seen so far isn't The
Product.
I think the laserdisc market will endure for at least the rest of the
decade until there are dramatic improvements enough to force a switch. A series
of marketing surveys trying to determine why the CD replaced the LP so rapidly,
even at a premium in disk price, have all come up with the same result. Better
sound? Nope. More capacity? Guess again. The vast majority of the public went
to them because they didn't develop ticks and pops or needle wear and could be
cleaned with Windex!
Since that already applies to laserdiscs, and since laserdisc prices are
not on the whole much of a premium, you'll have to do better than that to
replace them.
I am looking at the two new audiotape replacements with interest. The Sony
recordable minidisk is superior in a lot of ways to the Philips DCC system, but
if either takes over (and neither will until player prices come down
dramatically, tape/disc prices ditto, and there's a tremendous inventory of
prerecorded stuff in the format as well) I would bet on the DCC simply because
it can play the older analog tapes. On the other hand, I don't see anything in
either format that will make it the CD of tapes….
Jack I take your point about sell-thru being a very small part of VHS market.
Same holds true here in Australia. However, while a Nimbus-type video CD might
cost a video duplicator more (not hugely more though), the marginal extra cost
to the rental store isn't going to bother them — especially if the things last
longer.
OTOH, we all like to be able to record from TV once in awhile and there I also
agree with you. Until Nimbus offers consumers a recordable medium (they say the
pros will have CDR inside a year), the medium's potential is severely limited.
Unless of course the LD producers suddenly take it up and sell it to all their
player-only owning customers. (When does Hell freeze over?)
>two new audio systems I've played with a DCC deck, but Sony still hasn't
launched MD locally. The first generation DCC is probably going to become an
audio curiousity. It is slooooow, the sound is ok (bet most consumers won't be
able to pick it from CD), but why would you want an expensive deck using
expensive tapes to record expensive CDs? I'm not convinced it'll get off the
ground, especially if MD turns out to be more or less equal in sound quality. A
guy from Yamaha told me that a strange thing happened when DCC went on sale in
Japan, DAT sales went up! Apparently people were comparing the two digital tape
media, took one look at DCC's access times and bought a DAT machine. Talk about
unintended consequences!
Don going anywhere fast.
Well, the reason DAT never became a consumer medium was that they couldn't
find a decent way to duplicate the tapes in high speed mode, and real time
duplication, even 3X which is the highest Sony ever managed with any
reliability, wasn't enough to justify things. DAT will, however, remain the
professional (particularly professional portable) recording medium of choice.
If you doubt that there will be rental store resistance to more dual media,
consider Beta, which died in a masterful JVC/RCA/Matsushita marketing blitz
more than anything else. The reason it could succeed was the frustration
particularly by the large number of mom and pop video rental stores to
maintaining dual inventory and the subsequent resistance of the large chains to
handle duals as well. It is far more profitable to handle a single format, and
much easier to manage inventory and make choices on how many of what to have,
and it was the store's decision to discontinue the format that was behind in
machine sales (coupled with an equally masterful set of promos aimed at the
stores from the VHS people that gave them bonuses for being VHS-only) that
doomed Beta to the professional market.
Recordable laserdisks are feasible; the problem is, at this time, even a
recordable/erasable CD ROM machine is in the US $8000 class and you need more
heads and a lot more electronics for video as well.
I think the laserdisk is safe for quite a while. Right now it's giving its
market what it wants at a price that is profitable to all. I don't expect to
see any shift in video formats over the current rulers until HDTV becomes very
common and its owners will accept a new media in that format.
Jack…Do you know if a DAT can be used for both audio recording and computer
data backup? Thanks in advance.
-Larry
While it's possible to do it, I don't think anybody makes such a drive. The
backup systems don't need the D/A converters and PCM modules that audio
requires and I don't think the audio-specific parts are included but rather
substituted with backup-specific material. Again, there's no mechanical reason
why it can't do both, but I don't think there is any perceived demand for the
product and so I know of nobody putting such a beastie out.
MD — Beta's revenge! More good points Jack. Esp. re: hassle of multi-formats.
Do the rental video stores in your neck of the woods (US?) do anything with LD,
or is the latter a mailorder only biz?
There are some laserdisc rental places, mostly those places that are
independents in areas dominated by the big chains who want to distinguish
themselves. There is one such place in a nearby town that does in fact rent
laserdiscs at the same rate as tapes, but most do not. More do in places like
New York, California, etc.
However, one drawback of lasers is that often the laser version of major
films from big studios is not released until months after the tape version.
Disney is particularly strict on this (although they tend to lavish extras on
the LD when they do bring one out). Reason: laser is so much better a signal,
broadcast monitor quality, that a disreputable tape rental and sale place could
make near flawless duplicates! Thus, they like to insure that all the tape
money they can get has been gotten before releasing the disk version (one
reason why we won't get the finished print version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
until it's actually withdrawn from tape distribution). Not all studios and
almost no independents do this, but a few majors do.