Are CD and DVD based source units dead? Here are three uniquely different ‘Digital Media Receivers’ that will let you say goodbye to the traditional source unit once and for all.
It feels like the humble Compact Disc has been with us for an eternity, and it’s easy to forget that when it arrived way back in the early 1980s it brought with it a whole new world of digital based fidelity and convenience compared to the old analogue vinyl record and cassette tape standards.
Likewise, the Digital Versatile Disc was introduced a decade later and (once DVD recording became semi affordable) consigned the old VHS recorder to the annals of history. The world embraced both formats very quickly, and this was largely thanks to their immediate and clearly apparent audible and visual improvements over the analogue formats they replaced.
Then, with much fanfare and hyperbole, Apple’s iPod was launched back at the start of the new Millennium, while telecommunication companies simultaneously rolled out broadband speed internet services across the globe. All of a sudden digital music & video file transfer, storage, and playback no longer needed a fixed plastic disc to be accessed. Thanks to the iPod keying into this technology the portable media player enjoyed a renaissance, with Apple taking over the mantle once monopolized by the Sony ‘Walkman’ in the 1970 and 80s. Even if you didn’t own an iPod you could still access digital files via PCs, other brands of portable media players, or even via flash based memory.
Like before, these new mediums heralded a host of improved convenience over the older standards, and yet both of the CD and DVD formats have still persisted in the market place for probably a decade beyond their used-by dates. That’s because unlike the previous transition this one didn’t happen virtually overnight, and instead it has taken almost a decade to gain mass-market acceptance.
A number of factors contributed to this slower transition. First of all the first broadband network – while better than dial-up speeds - really wasn’t much faster, and on top this hard disc storage was still very expensive. This meant that the most commonly available digital music and video files were heavily compressed so that they could be transferred and stored affordably.
Given these shortcomings, the new ‘second digital media revolution’ was marred by lower quality and fidelity than the first one. It was a step backward from a perception standpoint, even though technically equivalent fidelity was totally possible. Compounding this was the Napster debacle that tarred the downloading generation as a bunch of thieves and pirates. It also didn’t help that the likes of Sony and Apple needed to go toe-to-toe over yet another new format war, and thanks to their smarter business plan, brilliant marketing strategy, and most importantly their industry neutrality (they don’t own a music company for instance) Apple were the eventual victor.
It is only now in yet another new decade that it is finally time for CD and DVD to be retired forever. Now ADSL2 level broadband (and soon digital broadband) is truly fast enough, while cheap terabytes of storage makes transferring, storing and playing back of digital files both more convenient and equally as high fidelity as the original CD or DVD versions. Indeed, it is probably quicker and easier to download a High-Definition Blu-ray equivalent quality movie file these days than it is to go to the shops and buy one.
This brings us to the phenomenon of the specialist digital playback source units, which now exist as a whole separate category to CD tuners and A/V source units. These units offer no disc drive whatsoever, and appeal to a younger generation of consumers who may have never even bought or used a CD or DVD before. If you are a prolific user of Apple’s portable products they also make a lot of sense, since they are all designed to integrate into these devices seamlessly.
The buzz term for this new category isn’t universally agreed upon by the marketing types at the major brands. Clarion originally called them ‘Mechless’ when they launched them two years ago, but I dare say trying to market something as being ‘less’ is far from ideal. Sony, meanwhile, calls the category ‘Digital Media Players’, yet this can easily be confused with the actual portable players themselves and is therefore similarly flawed. Alpine and Pioneer seem to have consensus with tag ‘Digital Media Receiver’, and given that the ‘Receiver’ part also means AM/FM radio I reckon that within a few sales cycles this particular category slogan is the one that will be universally adopted by the industry.
Alpine deserve credit for being first to the market with a ‘D.M.R.’ unit, releasing the iDA series way back in 2006 at what should probably be considered a few years too early. Curiously, while first to the market, Alpine’s iDA series units haven’t evolved much in functionality since then. Their rivals, however, have recently come to the market with a slew of very cool and exciting new ‘D.M.R’s that each offer definitive advancements in different areas.
