Well the movie industry did have one big advantage in that they had a public forum in which they could showcase their new audio/visual innovations to the great unwashed masses called movie theaters (which of course eventually drove the Home Theater proliferation, along with the availability of cheap HDTV big screens and even cheaper Theater in the Box systems). The masses were not required to invest many thousands of dollars in high end audio/video equipment and even more in new software (thanks to rentals), nor were they required to figure out exactly what new expensive equipment they would need to enjoy all these new confusing and incompatible competing innovations). All that was required from them to enjoy all of these newfangled advances in sight and sound was the purchase of one singular movie ticket, a couple of bucks vs many thousands of bucks (and for many, more importantly...no clutter in their living spaces with all that wiring and equipment and speakers and cabinets and racks and remotes with HDMI and VGA and serial port and USB and DRM and...well I'm sure this is all just preaching to the choir, all of us in this hobby are well aware of these things. Oh and Heaven forbid don't even mention the mystical enchantment that is calibration, this thing is of the devil! (well actually for me I have a Onkyo with Audyssey so it can be a fairly easy process)
I mean face it those of us here love this hobby and by and large most of us revel in the minutiae that is involved with it. But make no mistake it is a hobby, and a hobby of the few, a niche within a niche within a crevice, within a niche, we...are...small! So maybe adding a surround layer may not be the singular cause for the failure of a disc to sell I do feel it could be a discouraging factor, for those in the niche above us, right above the crevice the stereo only crowd, which is also a niche but a much larger niche than ours and as such may hold some power over us in the respect to surround. As we are all aware via sites like SHF stereo snobbery and anti surround vitriol can be strong and the contrariness of some people to cut off their own noses to spite their own faces can be, well, irrational and I've no doubt for some they would refuse to buy a disc with a surround layer on what, to me, would be a flawed principle but their principle none the less. Weather there are enough of these to make a difference to surround I don't know but it may be at least a contributing factor and so could assist making surround an easy scapegoat if nothing else, you know the squeaky wheel effect and all.
So I guess what I am saying, in a long winded and wordy way is...who wants to start the first public SMT - Surround Music Theater © where the great unwashed masses can go for a couple of bucks and listen to several hours of music in glorious surround! (Surround-Sounds great to me, yet to the great unwashed masses, who knows, all things being equal it would undoubtedly illicit a great whopping...meh).
Oh well for what it's worth if AF only manages to get out a few Quad/Surround discs a year from here on out I can live with that, it was a wonderful (if expensive) ride and I am glad (and amazed at the rate they were coming) it lasted as long as it did, I bought almost all the AF Quad/Surrounds they put out (including a few stereo only SACDs) minus a few Quads I was not interested in during this period and love them all and will buy any they choose to put out in the future (Blue Öyster Cult - Tyranny And Mutation...hint, hint) Thank you to all at AF!
Oh and I think it has been mentioned before but I would really like to suggest AF do "The Average White Band - AWB" Quad, I have a DVD-A conversion of this and love it, but would love an official high-quality SACD release of this one.
The BluRays of Skylarking and TFTO were #293 and #403 just now, in comparison. 
