Backing up Jim's points -- CD's still far outsell legitimate downloads as far as numbers and
definitely as far as dollars. They're losing ground at a rapid pace, but they are still the
mainstream release medium. Again, not for much longer according to just about every projection I've
seen, but definitely so for now. With the huge installed base of CD and DVD media, I can see enough
demand for players/optical drives being made for years, maybe a decade plus.
Also, every institutional/archival client I've had wants gold CDR backups of everything, so there
will be a huge installed base in the archival world for a long time to come.
None of this is meant to say that 5" optical discs are headed toward the scrapyard of history, but I
don't think it will be a sudden abandonment of the technology.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Lindner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Sound Forge issues
Factually -
Moore's law has nothing to do with storage - it has to do with the density of transistors on an
integrated circuit approximately doubling every 12 months.
The main reason that CRT's were taken out of production initially was due to the RoHS (Restriction
of Hazardous Substances) directive in manufacturing in Europe effectively banning 6 hazardous
substances used in electronics equipment manufacturing (there is lots of lead in CRT glass). The
factories for CRT manufacture had been set up quite some time ago world wide and maintaining them
would have been far more profitable then retooling for LCD and Plasma production. Almost all the
manufacturers in that business wrote off huge amounts of money due to the switch over. It would have
made far more sense financially to continue using factories that had already been built and
depreciated to continue to produce product that was extremely profitable due to decades of
perfecting the manufacturing process and reducing the cost of manufacture. That simply was not an
option. While one could certainly suggest that the switch over to LCD/Plasma would have caused the
change anyway, the timetable was definitely not up to the manufacturers of CRT's - indeed most of
them are still loosing money in the flat screen business and many have exited the manufacture of
them or now simply have product badged for them or do some rudimentary assembly of units. The
manufacture of the LCD panels themselves has moved for the most part to different players in the
industry who may not have even been large players in CRT manufacturing. The move to LCD was a major
financial stumble for several of the companies who formerly were in the CRT business.
I have read no press releases or news articles stating that optical media players are about to go
out of production. There certainly are the usual evolutions of models and capacities and media
types, but out of production is not something that has actually happened or seems to be on the near
horizon. Remember that optical media players have several markets that make production numbers very
substantially larger then audio home entertainment applications alone. Video Game and Computer
marketplaces are still very big users of these products and likely will continue to be for some
time. Again, manufacturing economies of scale allow units to be cheaper so that they may be
included into a variety of systems reducing item cost and increasing profit for the manufacturer who
has made the rather large capital investment required to produce these devices in the first place.
It is makes far more financial sense for manufacturers to continue existing manufacturing lines then
to retool or discontinue them.
Jim Lindner
Email: [log in to unmask]
Media Matters LLC.
450 West 31st Street 4th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10001
eFax (646) 349-4475
Mobile: (917) 945-2662
www.media-matters.net
Media Matters LLC. is a technical consultancy specializing in archival audio and video material. We
provide advice and analysis, to media archives that apply the beneficial advances in technology to
collection management.
On Nov 19, 2009, at 9:34 AM, Bob Olhsson wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From Tom Fine:
>> PS -- I'm a big advocate of standardizing on 88.2/24 as the archival
>> transfer format due to the very
>> simple computer math of down-sampling the long-established and heavily
>> entrenched CD standard for
>> playback and general-use copies...
>
> Because of solid state storage being completely subject to Moore's law, the optical media player
> is about to go out of production for exactly the same reason the CRT television set has. It will
> simply make no financial sense for anybody to maintain the assembly lines.
>
> That'll be the end of 44.1 as any kind of a standard.
>
>
> Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
> Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
> Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
> 615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com http://www.thewombforums.com
>
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