Much like the current battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD, there was once a struggle for supremacy in the field of high-fidelity audio formats: Super Audio CD vs. DVD-Audio. Actually, “struggle” is overplaying things a bit since neither really took off to any great extent. And, according to a post from CNET’s David Carnoy on Crave, it looks like Sony may have accidentally on purpose sealed the fate of SACD, which it created.
It seems even though the PlayStation 3 has the ability to playback the discs, it falls short in the output department, with no multichannel analog audio connection to handle the multichannel tracks. Carnoy goes on to explain although Sony may someday enable an HDMI out to digitally handle SACD audio, you’d still need an HDMI-equipped A/V receiver to, well, receive it.