Eddie Runner wrote:
Yeah but your forgetting you couldnt record on CDs back then!
DATS were asked about everyday and no one could get them,
the public was really anticipating the DAT to become the next
serious media but it never happened thanks to the record industrys
fears...

Of course the CD now that it is easily recordable and so damn
cheap is much better for most of us.. It backfired on the record
industry this time....
(greedy *******s)

I don't know eddie, i just can't buy into there being an effort by the
record industry to kill DAT. I mean on the short scale, yes, because
groups like the RIAA have opposed every new media to come along - VHS &
Beta, cassette tapes, Minidisc, and now MP3. They want to control all
aspects of the distribution of their product, which is natural. But in
this case I don't see them being a major factor. DAT was expensive -
ungodly expensive. When I shopped for DAT players in 1995, they were
about a grand, and the tapes were $20 each blank. Minidisc on the other
hand was out at the same time, and while ATRAC II sounded assy compared
to PCM/CDA used on DAT, it was a far site (far sound?) better than most
cassette players.

To me, a $400 minidisc player with blank media costing about $5 each was
a whole lot better deal, even with the trade off in audio quality. It
wasnt but about four years after that that CD-R/RW technology was cheap
enough to beat the DATs, which were waning anyway. It seems more likely
to me that DAT was simply introduced too late. Had the technology been
made available mid mid 80's, it would have been competitive with CDs,
and would have likely been a low cost option back then instead of the
high-end esoteric piece most consumers I know saw it as. JMO.




--
thelizman

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