Blu-ray for Mac Pro (view movies only under Bootcamp)

[cmaier]

why are people here so obsessed with blu-ray? Most people in the enthusiast pc segment of computer hardware couldn't care less about it even though it is readily available to them.

Human nature. You want what you can't have. Typical forum examples:

- processor upgradability (despite the fact that hardly anyone does it)
- blu-ray (despite the fact that relatively few people really would use it)
- 2 CPU sockets on the quad (even though most people wouldn't use them)

etc.

It also doesn't help that the people who bother to post here disproportionately reflect the small population of people who really care about these things (and who, generally, insist they are part of a population far larger than reality would find).

 

[Tesselator]

I could say 'HDTV is my business and I rest my case', but I don't think my career is relevant? The fact that I have eyes is.

Yeah,I guess you're right. That sounds a little snap-ish. But of course your career is relevant - especially if it entails learning the physical limitations and abilities of the human vision system. I pretty much said that because I thought the conversation was becoming cyclical in it's rhetoric and I was too lazy go look up again all the information about what resolution at what distances human eyes are even capable of detecting. I know at 15 inches it's like 100 DPI for monochrome and 60 DPI for typical color images such as photographs (and it's even lower like 20 DPI, for color resolution as an isolate) . Both of these are cut way down when temporal motion such as seen in films and animation is introduced into the test model. Contrast enters into it as well which as an isolated example, is why antialiased font-faces look better to us than non-antialiased. It also scales down as we increase the distance between subject and the eye. It's not linear but at 10 feet (3 meters) I guess it's down around 25 (±5) DPI for monochrome and half of that for color. Less for motion and etc. etc. A 24" LCD wide monitor is roughly 20.5" x 13" so even if some individuals are capable of considerably more than this that still implies that it's simply not humanly possible to detect higher resolutions than about 720p as an absolute maximum at 3 meters on a 24" LCD - and especially not for color motion graphics.

So why is there a difference of opinion? I say it's all in the viewer's mind just as has been proven in the distant past with motion picture film vrs. video. The association with ritz and quality taints the viewer's perception radically. Actually all vision is a function of the mind and not an opti-mechanical mechanism as we so often envision it. There's lots of neat little tests and stuff that play with this idea and also on the limitations of human vision. I'm sure you've seen some of them already. Not to mention the whole "I see dead people" phenomena. So as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, the mental perceptions and ideas you have about what you're viewing or what you think you're viewing matter a LOT LOT more then most of us think it does. As Morpheous would say "Do you think that's air you're breathing?"

.

 

[Mad Mac]

Comfortable viewing distance for 24" screen films is about 3 meters. At that distance there's no observable differences - even if you have 20|20 vision.

You are very mistaken with your viewing distances. Sitting 3 meters (over 9 feet) from a 24" screen is unheard of for TV's and is absurd for computer monitors. No wonder you can't see a difference.

Computer monitors are not the same as television sets. I don't know why people keep quoting TV viewing distances with computer monitor viewing distances when making an argument against Blu-ray.

Computer monitors are designed for close up viewing.. The pixels are way smaller than on a TV. Your 24" ACD is 1080P capable. A 17" MBP is 1080P capable. Even the low end Macbook is 720P capable. There's no reason to watch regular DVD resolutions on these monitors.

Watch this video from Apple's site: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/gilmour.html
There is a 480P version and 1080P version. Watch it full screen sitting at a normal working distance from your 24" ACD (around 2 to 3 feet). The difference between 480P and 1080P is clear and is not imagined.

Now keep in mind that these videos from Apple are quite a bit more compressed than Blu-ray. So with a proper BD disc you'd more than likely see even better detail.

 

[nutritious]

Human nature. You want what you can't have. Typical forum examples:

- processor upgradability (despite the fact that hardly anyone does it)
- blu-ray (despite the fact that relatively few people really would use it)
- 2 CPU sockets on the quad (even though most people wouldn't use them)

etc.

It also doesn't help that the people who bother to post here disproportionately reflect the small population of people who really care about these things (and who, generally, insist they are part of a population far larger than reality would find).

A lot of the times by the time you'd want to make a worthwhile upgrade to the cpu, you'd need to update the motherboard because of a new socket needed for the new cpu. And it's not like apple will sell you a new motherboard. But intel did kind of having a nice lifespan with the 775 socket, so who knows. Really, it doesn't make sense unless you build your own pcs.

I know this is off-topic, but I thought i'd just throw that out there.

 

[aponsin]

why are people here so obsessed with blu-ray? Most people in the enthusiast pc segment of computer hardware couldn't care less about it even though it is readily available to them.

How do you even know that... ? I suggest you go look on some HTPC forums and see if nobody is talking about bluray playback being mac or pc.
The fact that you are not personally interested in bluray does not mean that other are not... Wether we want it or not, bluray is the next DVD (in the sens that it beat HDDVD and is now the new futur disk format).

It's just a logical evolution, more space, nicer, better looking, etc.. People are are going to adopt bluray gradually... it may take some time, but eventually we'll get there. So the question as to "will mac support bluray one day?" is not a question of "if" but of "when" ?

Because when the day will come that people buy blurays as they use to buy DVDs, mac will no longer be able to ignore the public need. And at that point in time big steve will not be able to hide behing "a bag of hurt" and will have to move and support bluray because not having the ability to compete against PC for something as natural as watching a movie on one's computer will be very dangerous.

Alex

 

[nutritious]

How do you even know that... ? I suggest you go look on some HTPC forums and see if nobody is talking about bluray playback being mac or pc.
The fact that you are not personally interested in bluray does not mean that other are not... Wether we want it or not, bluray is the next DVD (in the sens that it beat HDDVD and is now the new futur disk format).

It's just a logical evolution, more space, nicer, better looking, etc.. People are are going to adopt bluray gradually... it may take some time, but eventually we'll get there. So the question as to "will mac support bluray one day?" is not a question of "if" but of "when" ?

Because when the day will come that people buy blurays as they use to buy DVDs, mac will no longer be able to ignore the public need. And at that point in time big steve will not be able to hide behing "a bag of hurt" and will have to move and support bluray because not having the ability to compete against PC for something as natural as watching a movie on one's computer will be very dangerous.

Alex

HTPC is such a small part of the pc enthusiast market. Most people are concerned with their graphic card/cpu overclock.

 

[aponsin]

HTPC is such a small part of the pc enthusiast market. Most people are concerned with their graphic card/cpu overclock.

Well I am not so sure... considering that all the HP, Dell and Sony are building HTPC ready PC with all the sh.t one needs, like remotes, media center and all...
And a lot of people are talking about Plex, XBMC, Sreaming Netflix on PCs etc... I really would not dismiss that market.

Alex

 

[chocolaterabbit]

tesselator:
I'd say if anything, i would think that spending too much time in the animation industry has dulled your senses and we bring a fresh set of eyes to the mix. anyway what you wrote above could be summed up to a simple chart floating around that shows the effectiveness of each resolution at each viewing distance and monitor size. i can't find it right now, but the reason why you can't see a difference and everyone else can seems to be that you're sitting too far away from the monitor. at 3 meters on 24" of course there is no difference between 480p and 1080p. but who sits that far away? the last time that happened was in the early 90s, when a group of us crowded around a small tv in the living room since we were poor. with a 24" monitor there's no reason to sit at any more than 1m away, and according to the chart you could easily see the benefits of 1080p. basically, don't be afraid of sitting close to the monitor, it was designed that way.
anyways this isn't really a discussion about blu ray, it could easily about apple hd movie rentals, so the point is moot.
cmaier:
actually i would argue that people are very interested in blu ray. when people see how clear blu ray is compared to normal dvds, and pretty much everyone can, of course they'll want it. the problem so far is that it's more expensive than dvds, and that's a time problem, not a "hifi enthusiasts only" problem.

 

[Tesselator]

Oh you guys are silly. OK, so how do six people watch a film together on a 24" monitor? I wanna watch you guys all fighting for face space at 40cm from it. That would WAY more entertaining than most films actually.

A 24" LCD is a little wider than the TVs I grew up watching and we all watched them from 3.5 ~ 4 meters away. Didn't your mothers ever tell you to move back from the front of the TV? Mothers know best! We're not talking about operating a computer. We're talking about watching movies. And you know you've got a pretty lonely life when you're watching movies by yourself 15" from the front of the screen.

 

[cmaier]

tesselator:

cmaier:
actually i would argue that people are very interested in blu ray. when people see how clear blu ray is compared to normal dvds, and pretty much everyone can, of course they'll want it. the problem so far is that it's more expensive than dvds, and that's a time problem, not a "hifi enthusiasts only" problem.

You are making a strawman argument. I didn't say people are not interested in blu ray. I just said most people are not interested (yet) in blu ray on their pc's. And I still maintain this is true. Most people don't watch movies on their computers unless they are flying, or unless they have a HTPC hooked up to a very large monitor or TV (and very few people have such things).

And by the time enough people have pc's integrated into their entertainment centers, most hi-def video will be streamed, not sold on physical media. Sadly - I have a thousand dvds and blu rays (about 150 blu rays now), and I love being able to "own" the movie.

I'm just saying that blu-ray should primarily be thought of as a data storage medium at this point, at least until it gets a lot more penetration.

 

[Sharangad]

Oh you guys are silly. OK, so how do six people watch a film together on a 24" monitor? I wanna watch you guys all fighting for face space at 40cm from it. That would WAY more entertaining than most films actually.

A 24" LCD is a little wider than the TVs I grew up watching and we all watched them from 3.5 ~ 4 meters away. Didn't your mothers ever tell you to move back from the front of the TV? Mothers know best! We're not talking about operating a computer. We're talking about watching movies. And you know you've got a pretty lonely life when you're watching movies by yourself 15" from the front of the screen.

I watch blurry disks on my PC with a 24 " monitor and I sit less than 1 m away. When I'm watching blurry on my PC it usually isn't with other people. It's for personal viewing. ( and I do have surround sound from my PC gaming setup).

If you're watching blu-ray on your laptop on the train with a 17" 1080p screen you're not going to sit 6 foot away from it. It'll be on your lap or right in front of you. At that kind of distance you can notice every single pixel.

Also computer monitors are designed for close range viewing. When you're typing a letter on your 24" iMac you're not going to sit 3-4.5 m away from it like you did with your TV. CRT computer monitors for instance, were designed for close range use and they cost most for a given screen size than a CRT TV set as they're better shielded for close range use and higher refresh rates/resolutions (By your argument a smaller screen would need a lower resolution. A 26" SDTV would have an effective resolution of 480i/p or 576i/p. However a 19" CRT monitor would have a resolution 1600x1200 which is way higher than 720x480 or 720x576. Sitting 3-4 m away from your 19" monitor would be completely useless)

If six people want to watch a blu-ray disk on a PC, it would be an HTPC connected a to a big screen telly. Most HTPC friendly mobos like the Geforce 9400 M support 7.1 channel sound out of the DVI/HDMI ports so it would be a single cable hookup for a TV set.

 

[HotPink]

Excuse the ignorance, but preferences aside, why doesn't a natively OS X Macintosh-compatible Blu-ray player exist? Why the windoze workaround???

Forget the "blu-ray is better/makes no difference". Plenty of people want to have the option of watching blu-ray movies on their systems. Why does this capability not exist? Even if Apple doesn't want to offer it (for their own reasons), I can't understand why a third party blu-ray drive maker wouldn't make one for OS X.

 

[Mackilroy]

You can already buy third-party BD drives - but you have to have Blu-ray support in OS X to be able to play BD movies, and that capability does not exist.