Also it’s standard, age-old format wars: blu-ray vs ADVD vs HDDVD vs etc etc. Artist who release surround mixes of their work – take amon tobin as an example – have no choice other than to release on DVD.

I entirely agree with the sentiment but the primary issue is simply that the medium doesn’t have a standardised format. It’s all to easy to forget that every media format was once engaged a hard fought battle to be the market standard. We’d now consider vinyl to be one thing, but 12″ 33rpm records were the invention of Columbia records and a dircect competitor of RCA Victors 7″ 45rpm discs. I wasn’t until an agreement was made to ensure that recrod players would play both that the problem was solved.

Maybe if this could happen now then DVD audio would be a viable. The truth is though, the boom in downloading (recorded – i.e. paid for downloading at least) is caused by the widespread proliferation of iPods amongst the global population. Why by uber-high bit/sample rate audio when your player won’t play it, your system isn’t good enough to let you hear the quality difference and you’re probably only going to convert it into a 128bit mp3 for your iPod…???

The porn industry has done exactly this by making the most of HD.

I didn’t though because I can’t remember exactly who it is that’s started doing this – I think Amon Tobin has a audio DVD release coming up, which he says provides superior quality audio. Its something a lot more artists could do…