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May 30, 2007 - 10:50am
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SACD support, still good
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I'm confused. Didn't Philips get out of the business of making CD mechanisms? I thought they did so in order to concentrate on newer/better technologies (for reproducing music). If that's the case why would they be trying to improve the SACD (which is already an upgrade of the CD).
Am I missing something here?
This 2006 bit of news is much wishful thinking I believe. Th PS3 does not play SACDs as we were told it would. I believe Philips is still making transports, but there are many who are out of the transport business.
WP, I'm sure, has more current info on this. This is certainly an issue for those manufacturers trying to make upscale CD players, including SACD players. There was one manufacturer, Ayre?, who was concerned about long term parts availability for their product's transports, just in case.
I give Philips great credit for doing a great job in supporting SACD with a wide range of products at varying pricepoints. It is too bad the founder, Sony, could not do the same.
I do not believe I have read anywhere that SACD mastering has gotten any easier. There is certainly not many plants doing pressings.
You're correct about Ayre, Jim. Charlie Hansen mentioned transport availability as a consideration in producing the C-5xe in his interview with WP in the July 2005 review. http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/705ayre/index.html
Philips pioneered all kinds of laser optical drives, they recently did sell off this div...it's become just another comodity. I guess not enough profits, but I'm sure they hold most of the patents on the stuff, so they still make money, on whoever makes em. they recently won a suit against some CD-R Cd+RW blank disc makers, on 6 patent infingments, only took like 45 years!!! Some swag companies are making blanks using Philips patents, and not paying, that is called an UNLICENSED product, companys that invent and create, need to get paid for their ideas, which is why patents matter. Philips usally sells off a div when a product has run it's course, they usually are onto yet anotehr breakthrough in something. Like from LCD they are teh first to introduce larger COLR OLEd flexible displays, coming out soon to teh consumer market. LCD/Plasmas, gonna be replaced with even thinner flexible displays. Philips runs teh world's largest PRIVATE research labs in teh world, bigger than Bell Labs ever where, or IBM is for research in new stuff. I picked up some replacement Philips OEM laser opticas for my few Philips players, VAM 12 12.1 2202 drives for cheap at Parts Express, solved one skipping problem as i mentioned before, they go for under $20 now RETAIL, so they sure have dropped in price, not as much profits as before after they have made millions,
Philips also pioneered the open reel video tape recorder (VTR) then the video cassette recorder (VCR) - both the 3/4" commercial and 1/2" consumer versions. Made their $$$ then sold off to Sony (I believe).
Right you are, DUP...that's how the business works.
When I was in the repair business I would order video heads, etc. for brand X and the replacement parts would arrive in a box labeled "Philips" - with the original Philips part number on the box.
Back to my point a few posts back: If Philips really has moved on to newer technologies why are they still dabbling with CD's? Maybe the CD will be around longer than we expected. (I would hope.)
V2000 was teh Philips vidoe cassette system, they invented video cassette stuff, not Sony, Philips also brought teh CD to Sony after Matsushita didn't want to play, Sony didn't invent teh CD Philips brought a working Cd to them for them to join the plan. Philips knew Sony had better marketing in teh U.S. V2000 being sold only in Europe, but poorly marketed, VHS eventually took over..all based on Philips invention of cassette, audio, then video. LaserDisc was a Philips invention, which then led to the CD. Philips did a lot of work on laser optical recording and playback.
Maybe they are working on yet more improvements on CD , they developed SACD DSD with Sony, maybe they have even better on it's way? They gotta always have something new to sell. Each upgrade it gets's better and better. Emmlabs with their own chip to do 2X upsampling of DSD!!! cool
The beta format, although superior to vhs, was popular on the west coast but never really took-off anywhere else.
Correct you are. Remember the vinyl video disc players? This, too, was a Philips invention...although very short lived.