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I hope they will skip the rear channels and focus on the three in the front.
When the format is finally launched around the world, DVD-Audio discs will have the ability to store and play back video information such as lyric sheets and pictures from recording sessions. Is this important to you?
This is the age of Max Headroom's "blipverts": Data overload whether you want it or not. Whether amortized or subsidized, it ain`t free. Watch a sporting event and you will see game data in one corner, network logo in another, and running ticker scores at the bottom. You even get to see some of the game you're watching! The same thing is happening to audio! It's getting harder to enjoy.
A DVD player should be able to play all formatsDVD, DVD-Audio, CD-V, CD, MP3, CD-RW, CD-Rand should be able to decode HDCD and have CD-Text. DVD players must have these features at a reasonable (competing with VHS players) price or they're doomed to fail. SACD would be nice too, though the SACD format with $30 CDs is doomed to overwhelming indifference. The CD-only player is a dead, obsolete product. The Korean-made Apex DVD players are so far ahead of "high-end"/"audiophile" DVD/CD players, and so affordable, it's embarrassing. (www.laweekly.com/ink/00/15/cyber-davis.shtml, www.nerd-out.com/apex)
My dream for the audio-video future, as unlikely as it is that I'll be able to afford such fun foolishness, is to keep my middling high-end stereo separate from a TV/VCR/DVD rig with minimally acceptable 5.1 surround audio. I have no interest whatsoever in audio DVDs that have anything but music on them. If such add-on garp is there, it had better not interfere with the quantity and audible quality of tunes on the disc! (Maybe I shouldn't worry about that, with as many GB of data as a DVD can hold, but . . . a CD by Roomful of Blues that has added CD-ROM material on it is the only disc my CAL Delta transport has ever flat refused to play.)
Just as long as the signal is not degraded beyond enjoyment. Will spatiality, soundstaging, tonality - all that I enjoy and cherish - be compromised? I'd have to listen to an A/B in a good system before I'd give a thumbs up or thumbs down.