On Sun, 2005-03-13 at 12:54, Fons Adriaensen wrote: > On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 08:16:14PM +0200, Jussi Laako wrote: > > You can play high quality 5.1 or 2.0 audio from SACD discs. > > And do nothing else with then at all. It's a completely closed format. > > > And those also play on standard CD players. > > Only because the flip side *is* a CD, and without that SACD > wouldn't sell at all. You could do the same with any new format.
Yes, it is simply a temporary "backwards compatibility" workaround to change formats. The second layer is _not_ mandatory in the "standard". That is, at some point, when an acceptable proportion - determined by marketroids, nothing technical about this - of the players can play sacd natively, it will be eliminated and the disks will only be playable in a sacd player. Presto, big media companies are back in control of the whole production, pressing and copying chain. Don't expect to see a sacd writer in your pc any time soon :-) -- Fernando
