yeah, no. The laser in a cd player will blind you without you even knowing, but It isn't strongg enough to hurt aluminum

Sony doesn't seems alone, here is Blu-Ray's board of directors:

Apple, Inc.
Dell
HP
Hitachi
LG
Mitsubishi Electric
Panasonic
Pioneer
Philips
Samsung
Sharp
Sony
Sun Microsystems
TDK
Thomson
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney
Warner Bros.

(from http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_i...009/Index.html )

I agree that there is likely to be a major shift in how we get content down the road, but do we really have "more then enough capacity" currently to handle distributing full HD content?

I think it is going to be some time, at least in the US, before the average joe is going to have enough connectivity to stream content of the quality that HD-DVD and Bluray supply.

The additional capacity offered by these new player is beneficial to mostly those that have a HD-TV. I'm in no hurry, the screens, players, cables, disks are all too expensive and not worth it for me.

I will wait as long as possible before getting these new technologies. I hope one of the player technologies will be eliminated before that time.

As for the indestructibility of CD and DVD technology. I know that studies have been done. I've remember when CDs first came out and the were doing all kinds of things to say that CDs are more reliable than vinyl. I'm pretty certain that my vinyl will outlive the bits on my CDs even though I take good care of my stuff.

I have one CD that I bought in the mid eighties (Ravel's Bolero and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition played by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan, Deutche Grammophon) that played perfectly when I got it, I listened to it a few times. A few years later I went to play it and it skips. No visible flaws, careful handling as long as I owned it, not a cheapie bargain basement CD. In other words they can die without anyones mishandling, or the mythical "laser etching".

I've read that typically you can expect CDs and DVDs to begin degrading in 17 years; CD-ROM technology may not even last five years (in other words don't rely on CD-ROMs for long term archival storage). Most of my oldest CD's still work and are over 20 years old, so I'm not too worried about that (most of it is on hard-disk now). Very few of my CD-ROMs more than 5 years are still viable.

jer

just dont lend your lp to your friends ... even the closest ones ... ^_^

you can get really pissed-off ... people might say you are over-reacting ...


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If I had LPs of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath I would put it in a vault, and threaten people with death if they used it for scratching.

I don't doubt the superior audio quality of vinyl over compact disc, since CD audio is 16bit audio, and actually some of the audio being digitized is lost, since trying to digitize an audio signal that has a wide range can be difficult. Still CDs only advantage is that it cannot wear out like vinyl. I have CDs from the early 90s, well taken care of, and no problems whatsoever.

i donno ... i cant hear it ...

i just believe lp is the way to go and not cd and dvd and i really like the authority that i can impose on other ...


btw :: recently i came across a led zepplin live in concert(not sure is new or old) in dvd ... i asked whether they have vcd but they said they only have dvd version and according to them dvd give the best quality ... i wanted to ask whether they have them on vhs but i refrained ... afraid that they might get angry at me ...


//anyway , i think now my vhs recoder should be in a non-working condition ... ^_^

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