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No Blu-ray. No buy. Simple as that.

J

joeshell383

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
792
0
I don't need all the fanboys telling me why I don't need BR. Will optical media go away at some point? Likely. Will BR be the last major optical media format? Perhaps. However, BR is set to be a viable standard for years. The bottom line is no BR, no buy.

1. I want soft and hard backups. Time Machine is good as an interim backup solution, but I'll need to do periodic full backups of my media and other important files to be able to store permanently. DVD doesn't cut it.

2. I want to be able to burn HD content and read HD media and data from others as they adopt BR.

3. I'm starting my BR collection in the living room. When I'm packing for travel, I want to be able to take a disc from my living room and throw it in my bag. NOT take my credit card out of my wallet and hand Apple money for a slow-to-download, inferior quality, rental of a MOVIE I ALREADY OWN. Plus, what if I want to lend or sell a movie? What if I want to take it to a friend's house? What if I'm in a rush and can't wait for downloading?

The fact that Apple is on the BR Board of Directors makes the situation even more embarrassing for Apple. WWDC would have been a great venue to start offering Blu-ray. SL testers could have downloaded a new BR movie playback capable seed to use on their new MBPs with BR, tested BR movie playback over the summer, and helped Apple ready built-in BR movie playback support for the general public with SL in September. All Apple would have needed to do was put an asterisk next to BR in the feature list stating that movie playback support would be offered with the final version of SL.

It is pathetic. It is past due and it has come to no BR, no buy.
 
F

Fast Shadow

macrumors 6502a
Feb 9, 2004
617
1
Hollywood, CA
Do you have a BR drive as your only optical drive on any other device, such as a PS3 or a PC? I ask because I find the read times of BRD to be terribly slow, at least on my PS3 they are. I'd be very annoyed if I had to deal with those kinds of slow read times on a laptop.

Anyway, I understand your frustration, but the fact is that optical media is on the way out - fast. At least in the computing world it is.
 
D

dscuber9000

macrumors 6502a
Sep 16, 2007
665
1
Indiana, US
Fast Shadow said:
Anyway, I understand your frustration, but the fact is that optical media is on the way out - fast. At least in the computing world it is.
Click to expand...
I think optical media is on its way out period. Even in gaming we're seeing a lot more downloadable games than ever before. Portable gaming for sure, thanks to iPhone. Nintendo, known for having poor online functionality, put an online game store on their newest DS, and Sony's newest PSP doesn't even have a disc drive.

As for the topic-poster, I don't see why you seem pissed. I wasn't under the impression Apple was even contemplating Blu-Ray. It shouldn't come as any surprise that none of the Mac announcements today had anything to do with Blu-Ray.
 
BittenApple

BittenApple

macrumors 65816
Nov 29, 2008
1,030
595
blu-ray has not been as openly adopted by the public. theres no real essential need for it anyways.
 
gan6660

gan6660

macrumors 65816
Aug 18, 2008
1,417
0
I plan on buying the new 15inch mbp and will be buying an external bluray drive. I bought a sony last summer instead of a mac because of the bluray issue. Well, that sony went in for repairs 3 times and was terribly slow with vista. I sold it on ebay a few weeks ago and realized I only used the bluray drive once. So its not that big of a deal. But I will still buy an external one.
 
L

lhotka

macrumors regular
Jun 9, 2008
212
0
It's simple - the non-removable battery is the kicker. Blu-ray drives suck down batteries, and if you can't swap them, you probably can't even watch a complete movie.

Apple's clearly focused on low-tech, low-end consumers:

1) Added SD instead of compact flash (consumer versus pro)
2) Removed expresscard (eliminate eSata capability, as well as fast compact flash card access - USB sucks).
3) Download movies (low res) versus purchase on media (hi-res).

Best guess is that we might see blu-ray this fall, but then again, until it's built into the OS (and it's not in 10.6 yet), I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
A

akm3

macrumors 68020
Nov 15, 2007
2,252
279
I'm just mad they don't support LASERDISC!

NO LASERDISC NO BUY! Simple as that.
 
A

atombu

macrumors newbie
Feb 24, 2009
11
0
NO FLOPPY DISK NO BUY!!!:D

whatever just dont buy,
whos gonna care you are buying or not? <<< Simple as that.
 
F

friareunuch

macrumors member
Jun 2, 2009
76
3
dscuber9000 said:
I think optical media is on its way out period. Even in gaming we're seeing a lot more downloadable games than ever before. Portable gaming for sure, thanks to iPhone. Nintendo, known for having poor online functionality, put an online game store on their newest DS, and Sony's newest PSP doesn't even have a disc drive.
Click to expand...

yep. once everyone realizes that everything is just data, we'll all be a lot better off. i predict the format wars will be totally moot by 2012.

tv/cable/landline/cellular/internet/texting/dvd/bluray/itunes/whatever. i don't see why any of that crap needs to be separate, aside from keeping sony, verizon, twc, et al profit margins artificially inflated.

just pipe it all in, and keep increasing our bandwidth. kthx.
 
thejadedmonkey

thejadedmonkey

macrumors G3
May 28, 2005
9,182
3,337
Pennsylvania
I've never seen a more closed-minded bunch of people. You do realize that just about every other laptop manufacturer offers Blu-ray drives on their laptop line.

Actually, I could configure a dell (or HP) with an SD slot, user-removable 7 hour battery, backlit keyboard, firewire, eSata, and Blu-ray. What apple did today most other makers did a year ago. All Apple did was the minimum to remain competitive.

I can't believe that anyone would praise them for this. You should all be booing them for doing so little.

My next laptop is going to have Blu-ray and eSata, and I'll be getting it when USB 3 comes out. If Apple doesn't make a laptop with those specs at that time, I'll get a Dell, which will have a normal DVI port too...

I can't speak for Snow Leopard, but Leopard vs Win 7 is no comparison, Windows blows OS X out of the water.
 
M

MVApple

macrumors 6502a
Jul 18, 2008
527
1
Nothing matches the video quality of blu-ray and it's really tough to match that quality because not everyone has the bandwidth to download large files. The HD movies in iTunes are poor when compared to blu-ray and they don't even include the lossless audio.

The infrastructure for broadband internet is growing but it won't meet demand for several several years from now. By that time, blu-ray players and movies will have a very large adoption rate.

Everyone forgets that it took DVD's years to become mainstream and for players and discs to drop in price. Blu-ray on the other hand is on a faster pace of becoming mainstream.

To the original poster. I use an external blu-ray drive and boot into windows to watch blu-ray movies. For movies that I really enjoy I convert them to mkv and I play them back natively in Boxee in OS X. I convert movies to fit on an 8.5 gb DVD and the quality is very good on the laptop screen, and by burning it to disc you don't have to keep the files on your drive. If you play them on a larger screen you will notice that there is a significant quality drop, but the conversions if done right are still better than what iTunes HD offers. The biggest problem is that the process of doing this is quiet intense until you figure everything out. It may or may not be worth the effort.

On more of a side note, a lot of vendors are including a digital copy now too.
 
NT1440

NT1440

macrumors G5
May 18, 2008
14,658
20,972
thejadedmonkey said:
I've never seen a more closed-minded bunch of people. You do realize that just about every other laptop manufacturer offers Blu-ray drives on their laptop line.

Actually, I could configure a dell (or HP) with an SD slot, user-removable 7 hour battery, backlit keyboard, firewire, eSata, and Blu-ray. What apple did today most other makers did a year ago. All Apple did was the minimum to remain competitive.

I can't believe that anyone would praise them for this. You should all be booing them for doing so little.

My next laptop is going to have Blu-ray and eSata, and I'll be getting it when USB 3 comes out. If Apple doesn't make a laptop with those specs at that time, I'll get a Dell, which will have a normal DVI port too...

I can't speak for Snow Leopard, but Leopard vs Win 7 is no comparison, Windows blows OS X out of the water.
Click to expand...

Well you can sit here and bitch like you always do, I'll be excited because I can now get EXACTLY what I wanted. Sound like a deal?
:rolleyes:
 
H

HBOC

macrumors 68020
Oct 14, 2008
2,497
234
SLC
most new bluray movies come with a digital copy as well.
As far as bluray not being adopted yet with the general public, i think this holiday season will be big for bluray!

I dont have one (i bought an HD DVD player for $100 when they were beat by bluray:) ) But I have been looking at the prices of bluray, and i believe it is a combination of bad economy and the technology getting cheaper, that bluray movies are now usually $4 more than their respective SD DVD versions.

Players are now on sale all the time for mid $200's. By XMAS, they will be $200 for a player.

It is a trend that digital is the wave of the future. I think that Apple is pushing their iTunes movie store. By putting Bluray on their computers, i think it may hurt them, maybe not...
RIght now, I think it is a waiting game. MS hasn't adopted BR yet, either. MAybe due to HD-DVD, but i doubt that. IF MS wanted HD-DVD to win out in the "format war", they could've made it be the standard high-def. They aren't afraid to lose money to make money, so to speak. And with a netflix partnership, being able to DL an HD movie from home is alot more appealing than running to a video store (the still remaining ones, sadly).

ME, i really dont care. Bluray is still expensive, as far as media goes. A single BR disc (blank) is what, $6-8? Archiving, i can see that being worth it, but who would want to risk all their precious digital belongings onto one disc? I have lots of GBs of digital photos (some files are 100MB+) and have them on several mediums. I'd rather deal with DL DVD's right now.
 
blackhand1001

blackhand1001

macrumors 68030
Jan 6, 2009
2,599
33
NathanCH said:
0.01% of people want to pay extra money for Bluray. So, who cares.
Click to expand...

Get your head out of Apple's @ss. I work at a store thats not even an electorics store and i see plenty of blu ray discs being bought and plenty of blu ray players. Way more than the number of people that probably actually use the apple movie system.
 
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