The founders of a new company believe they have developed a new standa

In my opinion Answer is D.

A. Home viewing is irrelevant to commercial viewing.
B. Video and Sound both are important. If only video can be improved, still there is an improvement.
C. Cost can be recovered in several months. It means that the new equipment can be profitable.
D. Answer. only movies that are compatible with the instrument can be shown and if such movies are not there in the market, then the cost of the equipment cant be recovered.
E. That is true for any new thing. It doesn't say that this will stop the patrons from seeing the movie.

Please hit +1 Kudos, if you liked the explanation.

Premise: The founders of new company are relying on benefit of new technology which gives higher fidelity than others as their USP. they want to lead that to other markets also, and think this will be successful as its a major breakthrough

To Weaken conclusion: what if fidelity is not the main thing what other's are looking for to improve their service. what is increase in fidelity is of no use.

Option C provides best example that its not fidelity but rather Sound quality which movie owners will like to have improved. It weakens plan and conclusion of premise:

IMO C

IMO C
C. The cost of the new system is high and would take even a major commercial venue several months to offset with improved business------- even for major commercial venues it will take time to offset so it is possible that it may not beneficial for non-major commercial venues.

A very difficult gem indeed.

The founders of a new company believe they have developed a new standard of DVD that will display movies at far higher fidelity than any other existing standard. While they recognize that the benefits of the new technology may not be sufficient to induce the entire market to adopt the new player and disc formats, they predict that format will be worth the cost of adoption in commercial venues that show movies on large screens, where the improvement in quality would be quite noticeable.

Arguement:- New format will be worth the cost of adoption in commercial venues that show movies on large screens.
Type:- Weaken
Pre-thinking:- New format will not be worth the cost of adoption.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the conclusion drawn above?

A. The brand reputation of the current technology for movie filming is so strong that it is unlikely to be displaced in the near future for home viewing. :- We are not interested in whether the new technology will be used for home-viewing. Besides, this answer choice is in-line with author's arguement that it will not be used for home-viewing.

B. Sound quality is important to commercial venues that show movies on large screens, and the sound quality of movies on the new technology would not be improved.:- The arguement doesnt say that sound quality is not the only thing that is important to commercial venues. Even if sound quality is not improved, may be that improved rendering can impove and make the cost of adoption worthwhile.

C. The cost of the new system is high and would take even a major commercial venue several months to offset with improved business.
:- Even author agrees with this arguement and says that, no matter how high the cost is, it will be worth it for commercial venues.

D. Commercial venues can adopt the new technology easily only if the movies they want to show are available on the new disc format.
:- THe answer. What if there are no movies with new disc format?

E. Patrons of commercial venues that show movies on large screens may not appreciate the quality of the new format until they see it in person. :- It doesnt say that they wont appreciate it. IT says that they wont appreciate it before they see in person.

As per statement it is not widely adopted and the new format is beneficial if the movies are available in new format.
Since the new format is not adopted movies wont be available.
Hence its adoption is limited by movie availability. Thus the right answer is D

Official Explanation

Reading the question: we get a plan, and we have to choose what will most weaken the idea that the plan will work.

Creating a filter: the correct answer is likely not just to undermine the conclusion, but the logic of the argument. That involves quality, the new player and format, and large screens. The argument says that the new player and format are worth it because of the quality benefit on the large screens. The best weakener of this argument as a whole is likely to weaken that specific connection. We look for such a format-quality-screen weakener in the answer choices.

Applying the filter: (A) doesn't mention anything we're looking for. (B) doesn't, because "quality" is about sound quality. So (A) and (B) are out. (C) doesn't pertain to the connection we're interested in. Moreover, we're not expected to believe that there is a low cost to installation, but rather that the installation will be worth the cost, and maybe recouping in several months is not so bad. (D) is better; if movies aren't available in the new format, then improved visual quality might not merit switching to the new format. (D) is objectively superior because it alone undermines the logical connection in the argument between improved visual quality and being worth the switch. It does it somewhat indirectly, but since it hampers the conditions under which the switch can be adopted. (E) is not necessarily a problem for the argument.

The correct answer is (D).

My take is C, the question is a weakner, not sure why D is shown here as the right answer

A. The brand reputation of the current technology for movie filming is so strong that it is unlikely to be displaced in the near future for home viewing.
Yes this is adressed in the passage that it will take time to get traction in the movie industry

B. Sound quality is important to commercial venues that show movies on large screens, and the sound quality of movies on the new technology would not be improved.
May be the sound quality is in parr with the current technology however the current technology relies on the fluidness of the display making it thoroughly out of context

C. The cost of the new system is high and would take even a major commercial venue several months to offset with improved business.
This too is adressed in the passage

D. Commercial venues can adopt the new technology easily only if the movies they want to show are available on the new disc format.
Yes this is a major determent if all the factors are taken into account and if the current technology cannot adapt then it certainly weakens the argument

E. Patrons of commercial venues that show movies on large screens may not appreciate the quality of the new format until they see it in person
Out of context
Hence IMO D
Thanks

Bunuel , VeritasKarishma
Could you please help me out why option B is eliminated. Is it because it's not just sound quality we are looking upon ? And it can be any other quality like visual, rendering or something else which on being improved would be profitable for the commerical screens and thereby not serving as a weakener ?

Posted from my mobile device

Can someone please help me out in understanding that where in the argument is it mentioned that the movies in the current format are not currently present in the new disc format?

This question takes place in a bizarre fictional universe where large commercial venues are running profitable businesses by projecting movies onto large screens from DVDs. That's not how movies are projected. And it posits a universe where it might be possible to invent a technology that "will display movies at far higher fidelity than any other existing standard." The highest fidelity version of a movie is the original version. If it's made on film, it's the original cut of the film. If it's made digitally, it's the digital master. You can't exceed the fidelity of the original, and you can project the original (and duplicate it exactly if it's digital), so the premise doesn't really make sense.

But if we imagine we live in a world where the question does make some sense, answer A is certainly wrong, because we're only concerned with large-screen projection. B is wrong, because a new product can improve on an old one by improving on one feature. It doesn't need to improve on every feature. If the image is better and the sound is the same, the new product is better than the old one.

As for the rest of the answers, it's hard to make logical sense of them. C seems like a pretty good answer here -- it suggests "major" venues will eventually turn a profit, but if the costs of the new technology are so exorbitant that even the largest venues will struggle to recoup them, what of all the other venues? Answer C suggests that the new technology is so expensive it might not turn out to be worth the cost for all but the biggest venues.

D and E are both very strange, logically speaking. Naturally the only movies that can be shown using the new format are movies that are available in the new format. We know that before reading the answer choices. So I have no idea, reading answer D, what the question means when it asks us "if true" whether D weakens the argument. D is obviously true before we even read it, so learning that D is true doesn't change the argument at all. Answer D presumably means to say something like "many major new movies will not be released in the new format". If we knew that was true, then we'd know the new format might not be very useful. But that's not what D says. And answer E has the same problem -- obviously people would need to see the new format to appreciate it. How else could they appreciate it? So I don't know what it means when we're asked "if true" whether E weakens the argument. Answer E does suggest an idea that is relevant, in the same way D suggests an idea that is relevant: if patrons don't care about the improvement in visual quality, the new format isn't likely to be any more profitable than the old one. But E suggests patrons will appreciate the improvement, so it doesn't seem like a justifiable answer.

So I suppose the best answer is C, though D also would be a good answer if it were rephrased to state an actual fact about which movies will be released in the new format. It doesn't, and this is not a good CR question, especially if D is the OA.

Thanks for such a detailed explanation IanStewart. I also arrived at option C as the best correct answer and that is exactly why I asked for an explanation because the OA given here is D.

Thanks for confirming the logic behind the solution!

Here are my views on this question:

A new company believes that they have developed a new standard of DVD that will improve visual quality (make it better than all current formats)

They admit that the benefits of the new technology may not be sufficient to induce the entire market to adopt the new player and disc formats.

But they predict that format will be worth the cost of adoption in commercial venues that show movies on large screens, where the improvement in quality would be quite noticeable.

They say that in commercial venues with large screens, the improvement will be quite noticeable and hence, the returns will be worth the cost of adoption of new player format.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the conclusion drawn above?

We need to say that the returns may not be worth the cost of adoption of the new tech.

A. The brand reputation of the current technology for movie filming is so strong that it is unlikely to be displaced in the near future for home viewing.

Home viewing is out of scope.

B. Sound quality is important to commercial venues that show movies on large screens, and the sound quality of movies on the new technology would not be improved.

We are talking about visual quality. Even if the sound quality doesn't improve, improvement in visual quality could make a big difference. We don't need to improve every aspect of quality to make a difference.
Finster27

C. The cost of the new system is high and would take even a major commercial venue several months to offset with improved business.

"Several months" doesn't seem like a very long time for big investments done by big businesses. Had it been "decades", I would have been more convinced. So the tech is expensive but it would be offset after several months but after that, there may be profits. The conclusion doesn't say that the offset will happen very quickly. So it doesn't seem to be much of a weakener to me.

D. Commercial venues can adopt the new technology easily only if the movies they want to show are available on the new disc format.

Now this certainly poses a problem. The commercial venue can adopt the new tech and put up the new player but what if the movie houses do not adopt it? The new company has already admitted that the entire market may not adopt the new format. Even if the quality improvement is worth the cost for large screens, what if the movies are not available in this format? Then the commercial venues may not be able to offset the cost because the movies they want to show are not available in the new format. It does weaken the conclusion.

E. Patrons of commercial venues that show movies on large screens may not appreciate the quality of the new format until they see it in person.

The commercial venues do have patrons. So people do come to watch movies. When they see the new format, they may come more often. Yes, the new format may not attract new patrons. But if current patrons come more often, the cost may get offset. Hence, it doesn't really weaken the argument.

Answer (D)

Thanks a lot for the answer VeritasKarishma , but I have a doubt as how could we infer that the quality being talked about in premise is "only" about "visual quality" ?

And what if in option B, instead of sound quality , the option would have been framed on visual quality, could we have still eliminated that option on the same reasoning that maybe some other quality could have brought a difference.

Posted from my mobile device

The argument mentions "... will display movies at far higher fidelity..." so we are talking about visual quality. We are talking about how the display of the movies will improve. The argument tells us that visual quality is better. It doesn't talk about any other "quality".

Option (B) says that "audio quality" is still the same. Well, that doesn't matter because improvement in one aspect is still improvement.
Option (B) could not have said that visual quality is not better because we are given that it is and we have to take that to be true.

Technically, "fidelity" in an audiovisual context means "faithfulness to the original", and it's a term that can be applied to sound (it's the "fi" the term "hi-fi") or image -- we might say mp3 is a lower-fidelity format than CD audio, because mp3 audio is more compressed, and thus more distant from the source recording, than CD audio, or we might compare the fidelity of two loudspeakers by comparing how accurately they reproduce a recording played over them.

But in this question, in two places, the stem tells us "fidelity" refers to image, and not to sound. As Karishma points out above, the stem talks about how the new format will "display movies", which suggests it's talking only about visuals, not about sounds. More decisively to my reading, the stem concludes by saying the "improvement in quality" will be noticeable "on large screens". So it's not talking about an improvement in sound quality; it's talking about a higher resolution image.

GMAT has constantly used fact vs possibility trap in options like in the option D.

WE DO NOT KNOW IF THE SYSTEM WILL BE COMPATIBLE WITH THE DISCS - GMAT HAS CONSISTENTLY USED THIS AS A TRAP FOR WRONG ANSWERS- FACT VS POSSIBLITY.

D) seems like a very weak weakener C) sounds better

Doubt if it is a GMAT like question , is it official ? SOURCE?