I think this bears repeating:

With the slow demise of SA-CD and quicker death of DVD-Audio, do you think multi-channel, high resolution music can live to fight another day on, let's say, Blu-ray?

Blu-ray audio formats of uncompressed PCM, Dolby TrueHD lossless, and DTS Master Audio lossless can do:

8 channels at 24 bit/96 kHz

6 channels at 24 bit/192 kHz


Universal Music and Sony/BMG and LRS Media are supporting Blu-ray that I know of. However, will they only release live performances and music videos with high quality audio, or do you think they'll see a market for audio-only studio surround mixes as long as there is extra HD video content to add "Value" to the titles?

For instance, Sony's Chris Botti Live Blu-ray has 5.1 channel, 24/96 PCM and LRS Media's Legends of Jazz Showcase uses 5.1 channel 24/48 TrueHD.

Both sound spectacular, but both are just live HD video performances, not studio albums mixed in high res. surround.

While i don´t see audio-only hidef-music on hd dvd or blu-ray on the horizon, i´m very much excited about the recorded live-performances on these formats with high-rez audio. I love live-music and i love video, so this is the best of both worlds for me. :)

Some speculation from my part:
In addition to publishing concerts/performances on HiDef-video with high-rez audio, artists/studios could for example include a high-rez audio version of a studio album as a bonus on the hidef-video disc. Maybe more people who didn´t care too much about high-rez audio until now (*cough* like me *cough* ;) ) will want better sounding audio-only recordings as well. If such a demand leads to a revival of SACD/DVD-Audio or to a new high-rez audio format, who knows?

I know, i for one would be very much interested in high-rez audio, but sadly only very few artists i care about are available on SACD/DVD-Audio. So i never bothered to get a player.

I rent bluray movies but I would buy bluray concerts and recordings. I love my DVD-A and SACDs.

I'd love to see HD optical media set itself apart using a smaller form, namely the 8cm Blu-ray discs. It hold 16.5gb per layer, which should be more than enough for even 7.1 mixes of 24bit music.

The small discs have a cool factor that SACD and DVD-A could never muster.

I'd love for high resolution music to have more success on Blu-ray but I have my doubts it'll happen.

It's not likely.
Blu Ray is too expensive to author. Period.
Dolby True HD (AKA MLP by any other name) is $10,000 for the tools.
Blu Ray authoring is a whopping £20,000 for the license, per title.
I am a huge fan of 5.1, but the industry won't even release titles that are already known to exist, so 7.1 stands no chance at all.

The DVD-A/V is still the way to go.
You can easily fit the whole record in both lossless & lossy backwards compatible formats, it plays on all DVD players, no new gear required.

I see a few titles out on HD DVD already, including Tchaikovsky Swan Lake. I think both formats offer a lot more than what you can get from dvd-audio. You can have the same audio quality and also get full HD video too. Can you imagine titles coming out with Lossless audio and HD video? It would be great to get surround sound and HD music videos, concert footage, etc. I'd hate to repurchase my entire catalog, but I know I would.

Just take a look/listen to Nine Inch Nails' Beside You In Time, which is available in TrueHD on HD DVD and Bluray. This is the future of music. Maybe the costs of licensing albums in lossless is prohibitive, but bring on the concert films in lossless 5.1.