DVD-Audio backers - What Happened?

[wappinghigh]

You idiot! Don't you realize what you've done? Now you are cursed - wandering the barren surround landscape - desperately searching for albums that you'll never be able to have but never wanting to listen to stereo again.

LOL!! That made me laugh....Your darn right!! It's now onto sourcing a copy of Deep Purple's DVD-A Machine Head. Having just watched the boys latest blu-ray attempt "Live at Montreux"...it really is time to wind back the years

[WideBandBill]

Alright, we have to admit that the format was confusing and was difficult for stores to sell because no one knew what they were, and people wanted MP3 in their iPods instead of HiRez in their houses. That being said....

What happened to the DVD-A Forum, or whomever those folks were. They seemed to cave into the whole DualDisc thing, but half-assed. They never came through with over 100 announced (in various bits and pieces) titles projected to come out. They wasted some effort on the even more insane MVI discs (remember those?).

Actually, the squashing of DVD-A is a LOT more sinister than most people realize.

To understand, you have to know the history of the DVD-A format. It was originally developed and patented by Meridian Audio. Meridian realized (or was strong-armed to realize) that they didn't have the marketing muscle to get the industry to go along. Meridian then signed a "deal" with Dolby for them to market DVD-A and also get a license to MLP (the underlying technology, Meridian Lossless Packaging). It isn't known if anyone at Meridian found a horse's head in their bed or not.

Dolby then, in the view of many, set out to kill the format. Dolby itself is almost a dead-letter now. Exhibitions that they used to take huge booth spaces (AES, CES, SMPTE) they now have no presence. Dolby after all is a company founded on "signal processing". As the bandwidth available now exceeds any conceivable uncompressed audio format, the reason for Dolby's existence has ended. Even in cinemas the new digital systems carry uncompressed AES PCM tracks.

Dolby is the black hand that killed off high-quality audio. A pity, really.

[0tto]

I don't know if anyone is reading this who might be able to pull something like this off, but here goes anyway.

Figure out how many prints of a surround album you need to sell to make a profit.
Let's say it's 1000 copies at $20 each.
This must cover your marketing, printing, shipping, etc.
Put up a web page that allows people to pledge $20 for a copy.
Wait until you get 1000 pledges. Print and ship.

Notes:
* The pledges have to be binding. No way to back out. A pledger either gets the disc when the limit is reached, or his money back if the limit is not reached. The easiest way to do this is pay-up-front.
* You would have to set a time limit. Say 2 or 3 months. If you do not get enough pledges, refund the pledgers. You could have the money in some interest-bearing account during the wait to cover the admin costs.
* Put up a "count-down" on the site showing how many pledges are still required to meet the goal. This will drive interest as the limit gets closer. Combine with email alerts for added "spread the word" effects.
* If interest in a release is much higher than 1000, figure out a way to make the price lower for everyone. This will drive the social effect and make the system more popular.

I am sure a professional marketer could come up with other smart details to make this work really well.

yeap, and those professional marketing "geniuses" came out with their brilliant idea... to fill up the boxes by
dollarstore's marbles and coasters, synthetic scarves, LP records (even that those consumers in majority don't
have means to use it), fake tickets and so on. perhaps in next batch we should expect a tarot cards, replica of
magic wands, set of clothes for Barbie... anyway, one can check out local "dollarama" to see what is offered from
China for next season.
your model is perfect, except... it won't work for hugely bureaucratized and corrupted big labels. CEOs to get their
bonuses, won't mess up with their annual report to shareholders, how many consumers they got subscribed to this
or that artist or album. they want all but for doing nothing, period.

[JonUrban]

Actually, the squashing of DVD-A is a LOT more sinister than most people realize.

To understand, you have to know the history of the DVD-A format. It was originally developed and patented by Meridian Audio. Meridian realized (or was strong-armed to realize) that they didn't have the marketing muscle to get the industry to go along. Meridian then signed a "deal" with Dolby for them to market DVD-A and also get a license to MLP (the underlying technology, Meridian Lossless Packaging). It isn't known if anyone at Meridian found a horse's head in their bed or not.

Dolby then, in the view of many, set out to kill the format. Dolby itself is almost a dead-letter now. Exhibitions that they used to take huge booth spaces (AES, CES, SMPTE) they now have no presence. Dolby after all is a company founded on "signal processing". As the bandwidth available now exceeds any conceivable uncompressed audio format, the reason for Dolby's existence has ended. Even in cinemas the new digital systems carry uncompressed AES PCM tracks.

Dolby is the black hand that killed off high-quality audio. A pity, really.

Thanks for the reply WideBandBill.

So much back-stabbing and in-fighting with DVD-A and to a lesser extent SACD, each camp wanting to claim victory over a market each failed miserably at creating and supporting. If handled differently, these formats could have faired better, but they were both abandoned at a point where they actually started to get some mainstream media recognition, only to be doomed by the failed DualDisc and MVI formats. One bad step after another.

At least they got their shit together for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray. There was so much press when HD-DVD folded. No one ever let loose a press release when DVD-A and SACD stopped appearing at your local "record store" and new releases every month dried up.

[ssully]

Actually, the squashing of DVD-A is a LOT more sinister than most people realize.

To understand, you have to know the history of the DVD-A format. It was originally developed and patented by Meridian Audio. Meridian realized (or was strong-armed to realize) that they didn't have the marketing muscle to get the industry to go along. Meridian then signed a "deal" with Dolby for them to market DVD-A and also get a license to MLP (the underlying technology, Meridian Lossless Packaging). It isn't known if anyone at Meridian found a horse's head in their bed or not.

Dolby then, in the view of many, set out to kill the format. Dolby itself is almost a dead-letter now. Exhibitions that they used to take huge booth spaces (AES, CES, SMPTE) they now have no presence. Dolby after all is a company founded on "signal processing". As the bandwidth available now exceeds any conceivable uncompressed audio format, the reason for Dolby's existence has ended. Even in cinemas the new digital systems carry uncompressed AES PCM tracks.

Dolby is the black hand that killed off high-quality audio. A pity, really.

But is it true? Did Bob Stuart or some other informed insider tell you this? How exactly did Dolby go about killing off high quality audio?

Because as we know, Dolby didn't kill off CDs (which hold 'higher quality' audio than AC3). And you can't blame the anemic market performance of DSD or SACD on Dolby. And Dolby itself now touts its high rez, lossless, multichannel-capable MLP-based compression audio for DolbyTrueHD on Blu-Ray discs. And I don't see from what you wrote how Dolby even killed off DVD-A specifically.

As for the history: Dolby first made its name in professional noise reduction and cinema sound -- not lossy compression. It migrated both of these to home audio. And some of its products remain pretty widespread today : for example, DPLII in some flavor is a feature of damn near every AVR marketed for the past decade or so. They're still making cinema products too. Wikipedia tells us "On June 18, 2010, Dolby introduced Dolby Surround 7.1, and set up theaters worldwide with 7.1 surround speaker setups to deliver theatrical 7.1 surround sound. The first film to be released with this format was Toy Story 3 which was later followed by 50 releases using the format."


Btw, a lot of my DVD-As -- and I've been buying them since they first appeared on the market -- have DTS tracks on them; that's an odd thing indeed if Dolby was or is in fact controlling the fate of DVD-A.

As for the company's absence at AES etc....the economy's been kinda troubled for the past few years, to put it mildly. A lot of companies have 'downsized' their convention presence. Dolby may well be hurting along with the others. And perusing the stock charts I see Dolby got killed this year in the market by the announcement that Microsoft might not include Dolby's DVD/Blu-ray playback codecs in Windows 8. That would be a huge licensing revenue loss for Dolby. To make it up, Dolby is going to have to try to license its tech to the computer hardware side, e.g., Dell, HP etc.

[quadtrade]

My guess is this is the truth. Microsoft just said see ya later to CES. Dolby is not in the battle they were with DTS when every year they even battled for the greatest party. I would get to meet Al Schmidt, Elliot Schenier, Ed Cherney, David Tickle, Robert Margouleff all at one party. The band would be a DTS band like The Mavericks. One year i watched as Edgar Winters, Alan Parsons, and Jeff Skunk Baxter took off to finish off the evening. That was quite a sight, for many reasons. These parties rented out whole restaurants like the Harley Davidson themed joint. This was when they battled for space on the disc, with blu the battle is over. The battle is now to stay relevant.

But is it true? Did Bob Stuart or some other informed insider tell you this? How exactly did Dolby go about killing off high quality audio?

As for the company's absence at AES etc....the economy's been kinda troubled for the past few years, to put it mildly. A lot of companies have 'downsized' their convention presence. Dolby may well be hurting along with the others. And perusing the stock charts I see Dolby got killed this year in the market by the announcement that Microsoft might not include Dolby's DVD/Blu-ray playback codecs in Windows 8. That would be a huge licensing revenue loss for Dolby. To make it up, Dolby is going to have to try to license its tech to the computer hardware side, e.g., Dell, HP etc.

[leevitalone1]

But is it true? Did Bob Stuart or some other informed insider tell you this? How exactly did Dolby go about killing off high quality audio?

Because as we know, Dolby didn't kill off CDs (which hold 'higher quality' audio than AC3). And you can't blame the anemic market performance of DSD or SACD on Dolby. And Dolby itself now touts its high rez, lossless, multichannel-capable MLP-based compression audio for DolbyTrueHD on Blu-Ray discs. And I don't see from what you wrote how Dolby even killed off DVD-A specifically.

As for the history: Dolby first made its name in professional noise reduction and cinema sound -- not lossy compression. It migrated both of these to home audio. And some of its products remain pretty widespread today : for example, DPLII in some flavor is a feature of damn near every AVR marketed for the past decade or so. They're still making cinema products too. Wikipedia tells us "On June 18, 2010, Dolby introduced Dolby Surround 7.1, and set up theaters worldwide with 7.1 surround speaker setups to deliver theatrical 7.1 surround sound. The first film to be released with this format was Toy Story 3 which was later followed by 50 releases using the format."


Btw, a lot of my DVD-As -- and I've been buying them since they first appeared on the market -- have DTS tracks on them; that's an odd thing indeed if Dolby was or is in fact controlling the fate of DVD-A.

As for the company's absence at AES etc....the economy's been kinda troubled for the past few years, to put it mildly. A lot of companies have 'downsized' their convention presence. Dolby may well be hurting along with the others. And perusing the stock charts I see Dolby got killed this year in the market by the announcement that Microsoft might not include Dolby's DVD/Blu-ray playback codecs in Windows 8. That would be a huge licensing revenue loss for Dolby. To make it up, Dolby is going to have to try to license its tech to the computer hardware side, e.g., Dell, HP etc.

I see most BR movies are just dts master audio. not many DD HD. Yes the same w/ dvd-audio most are mlp or dts. In fact the FZ stuff is just MLP and dts HD or SD

[bmoura]

But is it true? Did Bob Stuart or some other informed insider tell you this? How exactly did Dolby go about killing off high quality audio?

Because as we know, Dolby didn't kill off CDs (which hold 'higher quality' audio than AC3). And you can't blame the anemic market performance of DSD or SACD on Dolby. And Dolby itself now touts its high rez, lossless, multichannel-capable MLP-based compression audio for DolbyTrueHD on Blu-Ray discs. And I don't see from what you wrote how Dolby even killed off DVD-A specifically.

As for the history: Dolby first made its name in professional noise reduction and cinema sound -- not lossy compression. It migrated both of these to home audio. And some of its products remain pretty widespread today : for example, DPLII in some flavor is a feature of damn near every AVR marketed for the past decade or so. They're still making cinema products too. Wikipedia tells us "On June 18, 2010, Dolby introduced Dolby Surround 7.1, and set up theaters worldwide with 7.1 surround speaker setups to deliver theatrical 7.1 surround sound. The first film to be released with this format was Toy Story 3 which was later followed by 50 releases using the format."


Btw, a lot of my DVD-As -- and I've been buying them since they first appeared on the market -- have DTS tracks on them; that's an odd thing indeed if Dolby was or is in fact controlling the fate of DVD-A.

As for the company's absence at AES etc....the economy's been kinda troubled for the past few years, to put it mildly. A lot of companies have 'downsized' their convention presence. Dolby may well be hurting along with the others. And perusing the stock charts I see Dolby got killed this year in the market by the announcement that Microsoft might not include Dolby's DVD/Blu-ray playback codecs in Windows 8. That would be a huge licensing revenue loss for Dolby. To make it up, Dolby is going to have to try to license its tech to the computer hardware side, e.g., Dell, HP etc.

As one of the co-developers and patent holders of DVD Audio, Dolby was very supportive of the format in the early days. They helped with marketing the format, engineering and producing DVD Audio releases, promoting DVD Audio in their publications, trade show exhibits, underwriting DVD Audio events, etc.

Dolby has always had their irons in many areas/formats as a company that makes money licensing technology (LaserDisc, AC-3, MLP. Dolby True HD, DVD Video, DVD Audio, Blu-Ray, etc.) I'm guessing that Dolby shifted its marketing resources and dollars towards Blu-Ray as time went on - but I doubt they "killed" DVD Audio. After all, Dolby makes money on every DVD Audio disc.

[bmoura]

My guess is this is the truth. Microsoft just said see ya later to CES. Dolby is not in the battle they were with DTS when every year they even battled for the greatest party. I would get to meet Al Schmidt, Elliot Schenier, Ed Cherney, David Tickle, Robert Margouleff all at one party. The band would be a DTS band like The Mavericks. One year i watched as Edgar Winters, Alan Parsons, and Jeff Skunk Baxter took off to finish off the evening. That was quite a sight, for many reasons. These parties rented out whole restaurants like the Harley Davidson themed joint. This was when they battled for space on the disc, with blu the battle is over. The battle is now to stay relevant.

Agreed. Back in the day, the music concerts at CES vendor events - and even before that Comdex vendor events - were amazing. I remember a Comdex event where Word Perfect introduced a new version of their software by holding a concert with Ray Charles, his Orchestra and the Raelettes! And then there was the IBM introduction of OS/2 2.0 at UNLV Arena which was followed by a concert featuring what one IBMer described as "a scraggly haired guitarist named Kenny Loggins." Those were the days...

Back to CES. I stopped going a few years back when the show became more of a flat panel TV show each year - and other vendors in Technology and Home Theater began to pull up their stakes and left - most notably Apple. Microsoft will do much better by announcing products on their own schedule and in their own events vs. spending millions at CES. I'm surprised they didn't pull out sooner.

[0tto]

can't see any connection between Dolby and downfall of DVD-Audio.
after all DVDA is more medium to store different audio and video formats, than the format itself. even competing SACD uses same DVD medium to
store Sony's format. for all those years, particularly at beginning, i seen promo campain Sony in support of SACD but haven't ever seen anything similar in support of DVD-Audio. they both failed miserably. SACD due to Sony's greed, DVD-Audio - because lack of promo and hardware support from manufacturers.