Recently a reader wrote and asked, “With the near hostile posturing between Sony and Toshiba over Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, is it possible Sony could deny Toshiba/NEC SACD license’s for their HD-DVD players?” It was an excellent question and the short answer is no, but it does bring up some interesting possibilities. While Sony does indeed own a license to market SACD they actually only own one of two, Philips retained their rights to market and brand SACD as well. So it’s highly unlikely any HD-DVD player manufacturer seeking a SACD license couldn’t get it from one if not both current license holders.

Which brings us to the more important point, it’s possible and I stress possible that SACD and DVD-A could be overlooked on HD-DVD and to a lesser degree Blu-Ray, in favor of a newer higher resolution audio format. I’d really hate to see this as it would surely fail. The current high resolution audio formats have hardly set sales records in the years they’ve been available and another hi-res audio format would only splinter the market farther.

Michael.G

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2005 at 1:46 am and is filed under HD-DVD news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.