Samsung quits Blu-ray player market; civilization crumbles

A quarter of 2019 has gone by....it has almost been a year since Oppo announced its withdrawal from the universal player market....almost a year since Marantz replaced its SA8005 CD/SACD player with a model with no SACD playback capability....does this mean SACD is finally seeing its end? Where does that leave SACD on its 20th anniversary?



Based on the data at hraudio.net, for the first 3 months of 2019, 153 new SACD titles were added to that database. Vast majority of these new releases were of classical music. Another 25 new SACD titles were released in Hong Kong, for a total 178 new SACD titles released for the first 3 months of 2019.



So, except for the lack of pop/rock SACD releases, the format seems to be doing ok.

A single layer Blu-Ray has 25 GB, which is enough for 2 hours of uncompressed 5.1 surround sound 192 kHz/24 bit audio.



The superior audio quality this offers could help to supplant streaming, and the fact that it's 40 minutes longer than a CD could enable marketing tactics for them similar to those used for early CDs (i.e. 2 albums on 1 disc, format-exclusive bonus tracks, reissues of 80-minute CD albums with 40 minutes of bonus material)



On the flip side, this could increase the problem that happened in the CD era when artists started padding albums with filler in order to make the album 75-80 minutes. Just imagine Michael Jackson's "Invincible" with 24 tracks instead of 16.



But it would enable a lot of cool things. Finally, we could have the "White Album" on one disk, for example.



Double layer blu-ray for long compilations would also be cool, since it could take 4 hours of 192/24 5.1 audio. You could, for example, put all 6* of Michael Bolton's rock albums on 1 disk.