Quadio titles from Rhinohandmade?

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Quadio is old Quad mixes on DTS DVD's which are sold on-line from Rhino Handmade. OQG posted this link in post #26 which explains it in depth: http://www.rhino.com/article/what-quad

Linda
Hi OQG. I'm still confused what the heck this "Quadio" program actually is!

Why doesn't the music industry just make it all simple and get together with Apple. Thrash it out. Make a 5.1 surround format suitable to work within itunes, and add every available title onto the itunes store. No DRM like the stereo tracks..

I mean one weekend away thrashing the deal out and it would be done. End of problem.

I fail to understand why this hasn't been done. I mean what in the world does the industry have to lose? The download music train well and truly left the station YEARS ago...
 
Brian is just saying in a nice way exactly what occured. The guys in charge got tossed when the $ got serious and it went public. The CFO was installed as head of the place and still runs it. The music division was a nuisance after the real $ came in from royalties from the 10 bucks a pop from receivers. That is much more than they made from a music disc. And how many receivers??? Keep counting. So Now the accountants don't have to deal with crazy parties in Las Vegas were we met all the producers into surround, and bands who cared about the sound in the marketplace. The folks who cared about surround music were showing up in a bigger presence every year. The folks who ran the place were full of imagination, till the accountants took hold. But they knew where the real money is in the future. Check this
http://www.redorbit.com/news/techno...reo_headphones/index.html?source=r_technology

they are in a new product all the time. and the stock goes up

DTS started their Music Disc operation to create a demand for DTS decoders in home audio and video equipment. Once the demand for the decoders was in place (licensing revenues is where companies like DTS and Dolby make their big money), the Music Disc division probably became more of a hobby (to use a Steve Jobs expression about the "Apple TV" product) than the main event at the company.
 
Brian is just saying in a nice way exactly what occured. The guys in charge got tossed when the $ got serious and it went public. The CFO was installed as head of the place and still runs it. The music division was a nuisance after the real $ came in from royalties from the 10 bucks a pop from receivers. That is much more than they made from a music disc. And how many receivers??? Keep counting. So Now the accountants don't have to deal with crazy parties in Las Vegas were we met all the producers into surround, and bands who cared about the sound in the marketplace. The folks who cared about surround music were showing up in a bigger presence every year. The folks who ran the place were full of imagination, till the accountants took hold. But they knew where the real money is in the future. Check this
http://www.redorbit.com/news/techno...reo_headphones/index.html?source=r_technology

they are in a new product all the time. and the stock goes up

DTS royalties were, if I remember correctly, $1 for each DTS encoded LD and the DTS CD royalties were not that much different from what I was told by Lorr. I don't ever recall asking about DVD per-disc royalties, back when DTS was doing all the encoding themselves and could thus control per-disc royalties.

DTS was a very cool company when Mike Smyth (APT Corp and Algorithmic Technologies) and the others were there - lots of cutting-edge innovation and wanting to push the boundaries on surround sound. Now, they are like Dolby has become - a company that just buys up technology and slaps some glitzy sounding name on it. Same thing happened with SRS - they (SRS) are a joke of a company now.
 
At this year's NAB, I was commiserating with a friend who's an ex-DTS marketing exec about what had happened to the MC music product line. He told me that DTS still have a warehouse -- an ENTIRE WAREHOUSE -- of MC discs in storage that the CEO will not allow to be sold.
 
What's that about? Is he waiting until they become more collectable, or did they get some $$$$ from the major labels to get out of the market?

Linda
At this year's NAB, I was commiserating with a friend who's an ex-DTS marketing exec about what had happened to the MC music product line. He told me that DTS still have a warehouse -- an ENTIRE WAREHOUSE -- of MC discs in storage that the CEO will not allow to be sold.
 
Neither. As Tad explains above, he just doesn't want to be in that business anymore. So they're sitting on the stock, presumably until it depreciates enough to dump it and take a tax loss. Remember that famous photo of all the MFSL vinyl being pushed into the Petaluma landfill? Substitute DTS discs sometime in the future.
 
Neither. As Tad explains above, he just doesn't want to be in that business anymore. So they're sitting on the stock, presumably until it depreciates enough to dump it and take a tax loss. Remember that famous photo of all the MFSL vinyl being pushed into the Petaluma landfill? Substitute DTS discs sometime in the future.

Image Entertainment did the same with a large batch of LaserDisc's, as did Universal Studio's when a huge stash of MCA DiscoVision LaserDiscs were discovered in the early 90's - they get a tax write-off equal to the full value of each disc, whereas if they sold them, they couldn't sell them for their original wholesale prices, not now. They'd take a major loss that couldn't then be written off. Once they take a tax write off, the product must be destroyed so the company can't then re-sell it again. Sometimes it makes a company much more money to destroy perfectly good product than to allow it to be sold.
 
I believe that the DTS discs still exist. I bought several dvda and dts discs directly from their website. I would check it often to look and see if things like The Thrills or Simple minds were on sale. As soon as the site quit selling direct, these titles disappeared. The DTS titles don't show up on ebay very often like every discontinued title does. Stuff I should have bought is now going for over 100 dollars. Should have quit waiting for sale prices and just bought New Gold Dream.
 
For what it's worth (not much) I had this e-mail exchange with Rhino customer support:

From me:

Hi, I have enjoyed a number of Rhino products, and recently was excited to get both the Chicago Transit Authority and Aretha Franklin Greatest Hits quad re-releases on DTS-CD.

It has been awhile since the Aretha one, and I was wondering if you have any plans to do more in this series? At the time these started it sounded like there were more to come, but it has been a year or more. I am part of a forum with a lot of surround/quad fans and there is a built-in set of buyers for these.

Thanks for any plans you might be able to share.

Sincerely,

Their response:

The best way is to check the Upcoming Releases section on our site from time to time. You'll be able to find out what we're up to two or three months in advance! But, as John Lennon once sang, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." What that means is that the release dates are tentative and can change at any time, though they are updated regularly. By the way, Dr. Rhino either doesn't know about or cannot divulge any future Rhino plans that are not posted on the site.


Oh well, it was worth a shot...
 
Canned response. Nice try, elroy.

I sent a PM and email to John Hughes with no response, so maybe the whole thing is dead. Too bad they chose the wrong title for their second release. We tried to tell them in advance not to do a title that was released on Q4.
 
Warner put the stop to it, until after they were sold. Now that Warner has been sold, maybe an "ahem" would be in order. The people at Rhino have learned to be careful of what they say to anyone outside their office (such is the music biz), but I do know that they were very enthusiastic about the Quadio program (yes, I know two people there). I don't know what the next title was going to be, but it was supposed to be a much-demanded title. Also, the Quadio program is still officially an "active" program.
 
Couldn't at least Rhino tell us if the Quadio program still is on or not? I don't expect them to tell me anything in detail about future releases they don't know about right now, but can we expect more to come or not?
 
They'd probably rather have us as hangarounds (that might accidentically order any other product) than not. Disappointingly enough, some of their CD releases have appalling sound quality (for example the CTA CD).
 
Why would Warner put a stop to it? What are they thinking? Could they be gearing up for an SACD rebirth? (Doubt it, but what else could their reason be?)
 
Why would Warner put a stop to it? What are they thinking? Could they be gearing up for an SACD rebirth? (Doubt it, but what else could their reason be?)

May be Aretha Frankin's one did not sell that fast.
 
Simply put, I doubt they are thinking. All the record labels are recycling old stuff in expanded versions and greatest hits packages. They seem uninterested in new mixes and new recordings, due to the costs involved. So why are they reluctant to re-release Quad and 5.1 titles that would sell? Not the sharpest tools in the shed!

Linda

Why would Warner put a stop to it? What are they thinking? Could they be gearing up for an SACD rebirth? (Doubt it, but what else could their reason be?)
 
Simply put, I doubt they are thinking. All the record labels are recycling old stuff in expanded versions and greatest hits packages. They seem uninterested in new mixes and new recordings, due to the costs involved. So why are they reluctant to re-release Quad and 5.1 titles that would sell? Not the sharpest tools in the shed!

Linda

Your post was good for the laugh of the day! I completely agree, I doubt they are thinking.

One would think that in these lean times they would try to squeeze every penny out of every niche market no matter how small, but what do I know.
 
There's a relatively simple solution to this - instead of marketing quadio DVDs to a niche market for a ridiculous price, sell them as CD + DVD or CD + Blu-Ray editions through traditional retail outlets for a price that's slightly above the normal price of a standard CD.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I passed on the Aretha Franklin quadio title because at $30 + shipping, it was past the tipping point of what I'd pay for a title that could be described as a 6 out of 10 on the interest scale for me. As a CD+DVD(-A?) set at $19.95 (or maybe even a couple of bucks more) it's a bit more than I want to pay for the title, and I'm thinking the CD is surplus to my requirements, but it's cheap enough that I'll take the risk on titles that I either don't know or don't like that much. Maybe throw in some bonus video content if licensing isn't too problematic.

Release 5 or 10 of these a month, like the WB 5.1 SACDs out of Japan and build a buzz for the reissue campaign - put big honking colourful stickers on the wrapper that says that the quad mix has been out of print for 35 or 40 years, or never released at all. For artists that have a large number of quad albums, offer incentives for people who collect the entire set; imagine you'd bought reissues of all 9 of the Chicago studio albums released in quad - maybe at the end you could send your UPC codes and $5 to Rhino and get a nice collectors box in the style of the Chicago IX Greatest hits artwork.

WB, I'm available to consult on this for a very fair fee! ;-)
 
I respect anyone's reasons for not buying any product for any reason. You should also not feel obligated to buy anything either. However:

The Aretha Franklin title did go on sale for $23.98. And the Quadro program is the only one of it's kind dedicated to getting Quadraphonic titles out there. Was Aretha Franklin the best Quad title compared to what other titles could have been put out? Maybe, maybe not. Was it good that there was no Lossless sound at $30? No. Will we get more titles if we continue to not buy? No. Will the Quadraphonic tapes continue to rot in the vaults? Yes. To the point of being unplayable? Yes, in time of course. Many Quad master Tapes, if they even exist at all are almost 40 years old now.

That's why I bought these Quadio titles for what they were, Quadraphonic re-masters in a modern format for the first time. A baby step. I bought not necessarily for the titles we got, but for the titles we could possibly get in the future. But this will only happen if we keep the program alive by our support. Granted, $30 was/is an expensive vote. Other record labels might consider re-releasing other Quadraphonic titles, the one's we really want or have not ever been released if we in the Quadraphonic/Multi-Channel community show the way.

It's also not like you have to buy a box set to get surround here either:

The Best Of Aretha Franklin (Quadraphonic Mix) (Handmade)
 
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