Isn't it weird..

[Variable]

..that for years now the issue with media, whether it's been CD's, DVD's or even HDTV, has been quality. I mean to say that in the not to distant past everyone, everywhere seemed to want the crisp clarity of digital reproduction and then came along an anomaly, MP3's. MP3's are not high quality, but are judged by many to be "good enough." Now, we have movies of varying quality posted online. Some, lets face it, are quite bad.. still the public wants them. Looking back, who would have guessed this is the way media files would be distributed en masse, like they are now. Sure the large media corporations are screaming blue-bloody-murder, government entities are prowling the dark recesses of the web looking for someone they can latch on to and flail with the "book" and all the while the technology out paces them; kind of chaotic, isn't it?
Maybe it's just me; I like to think that there is a certain logic to things, you know "A" leads to "B," that kind of thing. But, it seems like just when you have something figured out "WAMMO" think again Mr. Smarty Pants.
No answers here, I am just musing on the weirdness of it all. I can see where some executive at Sony, who convinced everyone to build those big new CD/DVD plants in Indonesia because of the future need for digital quality media, is gnashing his teeth and pulling out his hair about now. Some pointy headed guy with a pocket protector walks into his office and says " Well Sir, why would anyone want to buy a Janet Jackson CD with 11 songs of CD quality when they can put the last 15 years worth of the Billboard top 20 on one CD of MP3's? The executive starts to sputter, veins stand out on his forehead he smacks the desk with his hand and yells "You're fired!"
Hehe…

[Budfred]

Two comments:

The human ear is generally not able to truly perceive the full range of music provided by high quality recordings anyway, so a slight lessening in quality isn't going to make much difference to most people.

Secondly, the trend will be toward high quality again. The current limitations are storage media and bandwidth, both of which are continuing to increase at an incredible rate. I suspect we will eventually be able to carry the collected musical works of humanity at high quality in a device the size of a cheap wristwatch and it will probably do a pile of other things too with vioce control. Video will probably require slightly more size since the screen will still require some volume, albiet less than the smallest PDA of today.

[pave_spectre]

Once the size versus cost issue of portable media becomes virtually non-existant, then theres a good chance that many of the compressed so-called portable formats including MP3 will become "legacy" formats only maintained by enthusiasts to be replaced by 'true' high quality formats.
As things stand with current ide hard drive sizes and costs I rarely compress anything, and when I do its at the lowest level of compression (i.e. highest quality).