Why are we here? Well the announcement of DVD-AUDIO certainly excited us,
so we tried to find out everything we could about it.

We surfed for hours, days, weeks even, and we did manage to discover quite a bit,
albeit from a very large number of sites. A snippet here, a paragraph there,
sometimes a whole page (but not often).

The information was there but buried in the real world of DVD-Video.

We called several major record labels, all were either vague or did not know about
DVD- AUDIO. One even asked, "why would you want a DVD without pictures".

Granted this was May 1999, and the format was not due to launch until October '99
in the U.S., November in Europe.

October arrived but DVD-Audio did not. The launch was delayed due to the widely
publicised "CSS" hack, a downloadable utility which facilitates the copying of a
disc onto a computers hard drive from it's DVD drive. Spring 2000 was mentioned
as the possible format launch once copy protection issues were resolved.

Spring became Summer and finally on July 1st 2000 the first DVD-Audio players
went on sale in the U.S. Software support for the format launch was non-existent
with the notable exception of one title, "ReTold, Standards No 1" by the Hamamura
Quintet; released by German high end audio equipment manufacturer Audionet.

Major label DVD-Audio releases began to appear in October 2000 in the U.S.
By the end of February 2001 there will be approximately 40 titles available there.
The remainder of 2001 will see this tiny number grow significantly.

We think it strange that such an exciting format would generate so little hype.
Hype that we believe is warranted. This thing could really change the way music is
reproduced in the domestic environment.

DVD-VIDEO is real and happening in a big way and there are many excellent DVD web-sites already on the Internet.
These sites concern themselves with the 8000+ movies already available on
DVD-VIDEO.

We at DVD-AUDIOWORLD.COM believe that DVD-AUDIO needs a home,
a web-site where it is the main topic for discussion, so we set it up.
We hope you like the idea and will visit us often.

In the coming weeks and Months we will bring you all the important DVD-AUDIO
news.
We will also bring you the world's first comprehensive list of all DVD-AUDIO
recordings available.

Software featured must satisfy a minimum standard of 96khz 24bit and must feature
lossless (or no) data compression. We realise that this will preclude certain titles
but in our view given the storage capacity of DVD discs lossy compression is
unnecessary.

We also want to hear your views, opinions and theories. Please contact us if you
want any information or simply just want to get it off your chest.

Don't forget to check back soon, we will be adding to our site regularly.

                                                           Denis Powell