The triumph of mid-fi

You also have to remember that the name of the game is to sell audio or electronic equipment, don't forget that.
The manufacturers need to sell gear to stay open, and that means that they need to balance the R&D decisions and Advertising money as well as other product launch/revision money.

When any company large or small undergoes the idea of making a new product or model, they are going to look at the demand for that product. If the demand is small than they will not spend a lot of R&D money on a product even if they know they can improve it because if they cannot sell to a large segment of consumers than they are inherently wasting money that could have been spent on product they are selling well.

Unfortunately in the end the number of boxes moved HAS to be an important part of the equation no matter how good of a product you can build.

The large companies are going to spend money in areas have growth potential, a large target market, or in an area where they feel they can be the dominate player. Examples of these categories are Plasma, camcorder, DVD, memory card product/Hard disk product.

I just saw a report yesterday that CD sales were down another 8%. With CD sales slipping every year to interenet downloads, I think it is crazy to think that a new media format that is more expensive than CD has any chance. If they want to succeed they need to have SACD and DVDA the same price as CD's. The industry is heading towards in home music servers, satellite radio, massive media storage on a recordable memory device such as memory stick by sony or SD by Panasonic. I am heading to CES tomorrow, but I have already heard about some new products from people who are already there. And so far big companies are pushing for 2 way product integration. Units that all talk to each other. Imagine how cool it would be to own one massive music server or mega disc changer, and be able to use it in every room of your house.
One more thing, to the people that think you need a really good system to hear the difference in SACD or DVDA over CD. You are wrong. Go to any store Tweeter, Best Buy, Circuit, wherever and bring a cd and a SACD or DVDA of the same recording. Use the SACD player with the SACD materil first, listen to that and then leave everything the same including the volume, and put a regular CD in the player the sound is tremendously different.
If you have never done this then do not say there is no difference or a slight difference. You need to do that test in that order to make a far judgement.
And to prove it I have done this in many stores using all kinds of gear.

I have also done this in a 12 volt system in a car. I played Fleetwood mack on a DVDA and then took the DVDA out and put the CD in the same player volume level the same, and you can deffinetly hear a big difference. Panasonic makes a DVDA player for the car that also plays DVD, and CD