Kind of cool. The SACD vs DVD-A war is an interesting one, because effectively they both lost (this article places them in the 1990's).
So now we don't really have a viable high-quality audio format - somehow lossy formats have dominated so much the niche has just vanished. You can probably find more new vinyl than high-quality digital nowadays.
My wife and I went to a flea market a couple of weeks ago, and we purchased about 20 vinyl albums to rip using her new USB turntable.
I was absolutely astounded at how much better the audio quality was than the usual web streaming/CD quality stuff. It's really hard to beat good old fashioned analog audio.
The most sickening thing about the "loudness war" is that it has become so utterly pervasive that even completely amateur-produced and indie CDs are overamplified and covered in clipping in the exact same way the latest Britney Spears album is. While for older music (~80s and earlier) there usually exists previous albums without too much clipping, newer music--even good music--is usually only available in a single overamplified release.
This is true, but it also represents a market shift - CD's are now really for listening in your car, or ripping to your PC.
LP's were for the days when you had a "hifi" and could be produced to actually have a soundstage.
The interesting thing is that's generally the target for SACD, DVD-A (i.e. someone with a high-end hifi). So they generally sound better irrespective of the technical qualities.
Video DVDs that are about musical performances (e.g. a classical concert) also tend to sound better for the same reasons. Although they generally tend to have compression, DTS, multi-channel, etc, etc, which I've never been a fan of.... All the same, the production is usually much better for a hifi scenario.
Ultra-wideband networking technology — in early 2006, an IEEE standards working group disbanded because two factions could not agree on a single standard for a successor to Wi-Fi. (WiMedia Alliance, IEEE 802.15, WirelessHD)
Better is the enemy of good for sure. Classic prisoner's dilemma : they could not compromise, they all stand to lose now.
So now we don't really have a viable high-quality audio format - somehow lossy formats have dominated so much the niche has just vanished. You can probably find more new vinyl than high-quality digital nowadays.