I was listening to some R.E.M. on the way into work today and thought of their DVD-As, which are really good. Then I reflected on the Blu-Ray movie I watched last night, Harry Potter 5, which was not as good as I had hoped. Anyway, my brain did its usual mashup and I wondered if the Blu-Ray consortium has their eye on eventually replacing CDs as well as DVDs.
Since the Dolby corporation says that a movie in TrueHD has content identical to the studio masters, will we get content of this quality on purely audio discs as well? Would it be in the form of a Blu-ray disc in TrueHD, or some other codec? Or are we already getting content of this quality on DVD-As and/or SACDs?
Since SACD and DVD-A have never really caught on with the public, though, I'm left wondering what will eventually replace the CD. Will it even be a disc, or will it be a download, since mp3s are already replacing CDs in many people's collections? Of course, high-resolution audio would require much more storage space and download speeds than an mp3 at 128k - are we there yet in our technical capacities?
Anybody know anything about the future of high-def audio? I know we have no crystal balls, but it is fun to speculate, and you guys are always in the know more than I. Whaddaya know?
