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In Reply to: Re: My vs. Your Crystal Ball... posted by WilHenry on April 29, 2003 at 13:00:15:
WH,As I've posted previously to you, I don't think you can do better than the 3803 for a full-featured, decent sounding CURRENT GENERATION receiver that will drive your speakers given the contraints we discussed at a price that's hard to beat.
As far as the ubiquity of future digital A/V across product lines, the basic economic reality is that content producers have designed and deployed digital A/V as well as the new distribution channels in order to copy-protect their intellectual property. With this in mind, I see several things converging that will result in a rapid transition to copy-protected devices processing high-def video and hirez audio in the very near future.
Let's take video first. Content pipelines have been undergoing rapid development and are now ready for deployment in carrying copy-protected HDTV from the content producers to the consumer. Cable is in an extremely stong position (75% coverage & unlimited bandwidth) with DBS playing some serious catch-up. OTA is also under the gun due to the FCC-mandated digital transition. Several additional HD channels have been announced to appear during 2003 - Cinemax, Bravo, HDnet, HGTV as well as an HD Video on Demand service to name a few. This is in addition to NBC,ABC,CBS,PBS,UPN,HBO,SHO,ESPN,DSC already putting out HDTV. The recent cable operators agreement coupled with FCC-induced OTA HDTV tuners in future TV sets and the adoption of DVI/HDCP as the standard HDTV video interface have pretty much settled things on the equipment front. The public is now aware of HDTV, wants it and is buying it. The only remaining items are the ability to record HDTV and HD-DVD. The first is currently being addressed in the next generation of PVRs (Tivo and the like). The second is being designed as we speak and unlike some other technologies, HD-DVD will be backward compatible with current DVD-Videos.
On the audio front, you have much the same situation. The studios need to move from unprotected to copy-protected media. At the same time, it would nice (for them) if they could get us to rebuy our collections. Hey - how about compelling, high-resolution multichannel mixes of all our favorites? That's what DVD-Audio and SACD are all about. But there's some major problems holding up their widespread adoption. First, most people will NOT implement multichannel audio setups just to listen to music. Second, the current crop of players and processors are simply too complex to set up in multichannel mode. The solution to the first problem lies in the video realm. If you can get folks to buy into HDTV and (HD)-DVD, this implies a multichannel audio capability. By piggy-backing hirez onto this existing infrastructure, you've leveraged people's investments and given them "something for nothing". The second problem (hookup complexity) is easily solved by implementing a simple copy-protected digital interface for audio. The i's and t's are being dotted and crossed at this moment to achieve such an interface.
So what's the impact of these forces on upcoming processors and players? Simple - processors are going to get smarter and players are going to get dumber. It makes no sense technically or financially to put DSPs, DACs and output stages in players when they're already in pre/pros and receivers. Players will become transports and carousel-type universal transports at that. A/V pre/pros and receivers will sport both IEE1394 hirez audio interfaces and DVI/HDCP (HDMI) video interfaces as well as some legacy interfaces such as component video, S-video, RCA audio, TOSlink, etc. There will be up/down/side conversion between these interfaces in a strict matrix that is dictated by the content producers. IOW, you will not be able to convert HD on DVI to HD on component. Similarly, DVD-Audio will not be available on TOSlink. There will also be a gizmo that I call an "Audio Processor". It will support a subset of the A/V processor - specifically decoding for SACD and DVD-Audio without all the video and HT stuff. This will be a niche item and will be priced just as stratospherically as a'phile gear is presently.
Finally, there will be no resistance to this convergence. Nobody cares about obsoleting the "weirdo" stereo equipment out there. The future is HDTV and multichannel audio. And it's coming on fast.
My crystal ball grows cloudy...
Austin
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Follow Ups
- Re: I see a ... - williak 17:43:08 04/29/03 (1)
- Re: I see a ... - ggraff 09:15:45 05/10/03 (0)
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