It's a war, isn't it?

I was researching the history of the two "contenders" inception some days ago. What amazes now, looking back, is the fact that, in 1999, on the eve of the European launch of the formats (better, on the eve of the tentative launch date) SACD perspective seemed to be a dim one.
DVD-A seemed to have all of the trumps in hand to chase away what seemed to be an ill conceived attempt, on the part of Sony and Philips, to relive that source of granted profits CD had been for the previous 20 years, in view of the fact that the main CD patents were expiring. SACD wasn't superior to DVD-A in any way.
Technologically; it was just a proprietary duplication of some of its features, not even all of them.
An evident advantage for DVD-A was the fact that most recording studios and services were already equipped with high-resolution PCM chains (at least 20bit/48KHz); more importantly, all of the majors, with the obvious exception of Sony Music, were on DVD-A's side. What happened after that, to reverse or, at least, even out the situation? According to the legend, a Northern European hacker, fed up with the fact that he couldn't watch a DVD on his Linux box, cracked DVD-Video's protection code.
Quite obviously, it didn't work out that way (it was most probably a team effort), the guy had his troubles with the law, but the message was clear: with a software the source code for which readily available all over the Internet, the purportedly unbreakable DVD-Video anti-piracy code was history.
One of DVD-A's attractives for major label executives was the fact that it would solve piracy issues, but this, now, was clearly not the case, not with the same protection scheme as DVD-Video.

Then the row of delays began: first the launch was delayed by some months, then by a whole year; if we identify, as a launch date, the one in which some significant software appeared, even more than that (someone would say that none of the high resolution formats has been launched yet, in that sense, but this would be stretching the truth…). SACD was born secure, as its protection scheme is a hardware one. If someone needs to cheat a player into thinking that something which is not a SACD should be read as if it was, the player needs to be chipped the Playstation way, but the market numbers aren't large enough yet for someone to bother with that.
So the proprietary format stole the stage, as Sony and Philips took advantage of the delay to rush the players and the software out (even if the players weren't exactly cheap and the software wasn't exactly plentiful…), even trying to imitate the successful launch of CD and to build on the kind of available hardware, which was of a custom, costly high-end nature.
I understand that the triumph of CD over vinyl (analogue brothers, don't get angry: CD has indeed defeated vinyl commercially), or at least the awareness of its potentiality to be the single inventory music distribution format, came from a marginal sector of the music industry, that of classical music. The marketing consultants of Sony and Philips must have thought of a remake of that strategy: the launch was unashamedly a high-end, two channel one, targeted to that kind of people who could afford five-thousand-dollars players in software availability, with jazz and rock classics and classical music.
It wasn't an attempt to flood the market with big numbers, but SACD has been able to establish a credibility as high-end format, one for those who appreciate sound quality, targeted straight at me and you. In the meanwhile, the real assault could be packed, the ingredients of which would have been low cost machines, maybe with the ability to play DVD-Video discs, too, and multichannel software.

To establish a market perception (let's not mention some obviously surrealistic announcements of thousands available discs in a few months) Sony went on to finance the SACD projects of a number of independent, classical or jazz music, audiophile-oriented or recording quality aware labels (I am quite sure ASV's few SACD titles have been partially funded by Sony).
In the meanwhile, DVD Forum's WG4 (the "audio" one) was trying to take a decision. In the end, a revision of the DVD-Audio standard was issued, with the maligned optional watermark, and a still uncracked 56bit-encrypted file system; but SACD was, now, leading. EMI's and BMG's enthusiasm had almost run out, Universal was changing ownership, indies (with the exception of some DVD-A oriented, mostly German, label) had issued their first SACDs with Sony or Philips help and SACD's viability as a standard was established.
The first DVD-Audio pre-production players were, as it seems, nothing special sonically, sometimes had troubles even to run their own demo discs, and were plain bad at playing CDs, sonically. The first DVD-A player to reach the market, the Techics DVD-A 10, was an okay machine, but nothing more than a DVD-Video player on steroids if compared with Sony's and Marantz's heavyweight SACD players. The main problem was the fact that if a standard can be too open, DVD-Audio is that one.
The fact is, a DVD-Audio can have stereo and/or multichannel tracks, with resolutions ranging from CD standard to 192 KHz/24 bit for stereo and 96KHz/24 bit for multichannel; it can contain a DVD-Video compatible audio program, it can contain video features.
"Can" is the word of the day, as it's hard to know what you're getting from the box (even if, now, most issues have some information about what's on the disc).
You can have discs whose resolution isn't quite so high (I have actually seen 16 bit/44.1 KHz: what's the point?)

You can have discs without a stereo program: the format, in fact, requires an on-the-fly down-mix feature to be performed by players according to hints annealed in the multichannel program, a technology which arises lots of doubts on the sound quality), and the disc might not play on DVD-Video players.
This would be a point in favour of SACD, if there weren't some doubtful issues on that field also: Universal classical SACDs (yes, Universal Music has partially joined the SACD camp in the meanwhile) feature, on the inside of the booklet - let people know once they bought the record, I say - a table showing the recording source, and it's mostly 44.1 or 48/24 for new recordings and 96/24 for reissues; an evident by-product of a U-turn on the preferred format choice, but also the introduction to SACD of a variable which seemed to be a problem of DVD-Audio only. It's true that many SACDs are issued from PCM masters (even some of the Sonys are) but having the evidence is different from suspecting it.
Talking confusion, do we need to talk record labels? Ok, Sony is firmly on the SACD camp. Warner is on the DVD-Audio camp, but this doesn't prevent its Hong Kong subsidiary from issuing SACDs. Emi have issued some DVD-A, and continue to do so through Capitol, but they issued The Dark Side of The Moon, there will be some Bowie titles and there are the Virgin SACDs and some other ones by national subsidiaries. BMG seem to be on hold - after Elv1s, nothing much seems to be appearing.
Universal Music, well, Universal Music. Are you joking, guys? I was ready to write that universal players would solve the issue of the new digital formats for the consumer, and these guys announce that they will issue, further to the SACDs they have brought to the market and to the ones they are fully committed to issue in the future, DVD-Audios.
To which I would say, fine, no problem for the consumer, he/she can buy a good multistandard machine and enjoy what he/she likes, format notwithstanding. But, guys, why issue those same records on DVD-A you already got out on SACD? There is, I guess, a 70% overlapping between issued or announced SACDs and announced DVD-As.
What's the point? I understand a multichannel new mix costs a lot, but why give the consumers the same in two formats instead of sticking to one and trying to promote that one? Is this a race? Cui prodest, as Latins would have it? Or are you trying a new edition of the failed DVD-Video regional coding, with DVD-A aimed at the North American market and SACD aimed at the European one? I am not a marketing or strategy expert, but, guys, it doesn't take a guru or a genius to predict it won't work…