While SACD is clearly solid from a technology point of view, I think it will eventually disappear from the map, or at least be limited to a very small corner of the audiophile market.
For all of the bickering that has taken place in this forum and on other forums, I think everyone is overlooking the fundemental problem with SACD. The problem with SACD is that Sony is the driving force behind it. No, I don't think Sony is evil or ignorant. The problem is that Sony owns several major record labels and they want to charge the record labels that are not owned by Sony royalties for releasing product in the SACD format. No self-respecting record company or their parent corporation is going to pay royalties to their competition if they can avoid it. I would expect Sony labels to put out SACD titles and everyone else to put out DVD-Audio titles. Since Sony's share of labels is relatively small compared to the overall size of the market, I expect SACD to lose this battle.
For all of the bickering that has taken place in this forum and on other forums, I think everyone is overlooking the fundemental problem with SACD. The problem with SACD is that Sony is the driving force behind it. No, I don't think Sony is evil or ignorant. The problem is that Sony owns several major record labels and they want to charge the record labels that are not owned by Sony royalties for releasing product in the SACD format. No self-respecting record company or their parent corporation is going to pay royalties to their competition if they can avoid it. I would expect Sony labels to put out SACD titles and everyone else to put out DVD-Audio titles. Since Sony's share of labels is relatively small compared to the overall size of the market, I expect SACD to lose this battle.