Blu-ray is better but not massively so which shows in the uptake rate. For the vast majority DVD is good enough so why spend a lot more?
Well, as one of the links I posted stated, Blu-Ray is growing faster than DVD did at the same point in its life, about twice the rate. Blu-Ray literally has double the marketshare 2.5 years into its life that DVD had 2.5 years into its life.
Like the one person said, people seem to think DVD was an overnight success. But in reality, it didn't finally break 50% marketshare and "overtake" VHS until 2003. A full SIX years after the format launched.
People seem to forget that DVD launched in 1997 and didn't really become popular until around 2001-2002.
Yet Apple users are here, frothing at the mouth, over the prospect of Apple doing a complete 180 and make a big move AWAY from their digital media commitment, to include a floundering and largely unpopular "HD" drive, that will merely playback a $50 blu-ray disc.
I don't know what you're talking about, but Amazon's average blu-ray prices around $20. At Best Buy and Fry's its about $25.
And again, how is Blu-Ray unpopular? Click the links in an earlier post of mine and you'll see its growing faster than DVD did at the same point in its life.
So instead of getting you to buy, lets say, (4) $9.99 HD titles from the iTunes Store (hypothetical future price), and watching them on your Mac, Apple is going to do substantial R&D to include a new disc drive that is complete LOSS for them. They spend money to develop and include a new feature (that would then become a standard), that has no method of bringing in additional revenue, and in fact will hurt their #1 media revenue stream.
Thats too bad for them if Blu-Ray hurts iTunes sales.
I mean if you want to look at it that way, including optical drives in their Macs allows people to play DVDs, which hurts Apple's revenue when it comes to SD rentals and purchases. If thats so bad for Apple, why haven't they just gone back to CD writers or started pushing the sales of external HDDs while including their restore media on Flash drives?
Owning Blu-Ray now, theres no way I could go from 1080p video encoded at 40Mbps+ H.264 and VC-1 video with lossless audio down to 720p 4.5Mbps H.264 with Dolby Digital audio that doesn't even have a bitrate comparable to DVD.
Sorry, they were $50 per disc when I lost interest. Now they are $30 per disc, only 3 times the price of an iTunes movie. Pardon me.
Most blu-ray discs I see are $20-$25.
Let's not forget that while blu-ray might be an average of $10 more than a movie from iTunes, it offers 6 times the resolution and 30 times the video bitrate, while offering uncompressed/lossless multi-channel audio compared to iTunes mostly stereo 128Kbps AAC encoded audio.
You're absolutely on target regarding Apple's poor selection, but quite obviously, that is for the time being. Once the negotiations succeed the way they have for music, it WILL be an alternative to the blu ray disc experience, at a fraction of the cost.
Really? So Apple is going to go from 480p video up to 1080p? Don't bring up the 720p stuff on Apple TV, seeing as how thats only available to a fraction of the amount of people that currently own Blu-Ray.
Not only does Apple have to increase the resolution by 6x, they have to bump the video bitrate from the current 1.5Mbps H.264 up to 40Mbps+ H.264, like Blu-Ray. On top of that, they'll have to go from their extremely low bitrate AC-3 or AAC audio up to multi-channel lossless or uncompressed audio.
Oh and let's not forget the restrictions! Will I still only be able to play it on a computer, iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV? Can't burn it to a disc and play it on anything? No thanks.
Not to mention convenience, convenience, convenience.
What convenience? For a downloadable movie to equal that of a Blu-Ray disc its going to have to be the same 25-50GB in size that Blu-Ray movies currently are. I'm certainly not going to shell out $150 a month to Charter or Verizon for their 60 and 50Mbps internet services. On my current 10Mbps service or even the upgraded 20Mbps service that both offer here, it's still going to take 2-3x longer than the movie is to download it at that quality.
I'm certainly not going to settle for less quality than Blu-Ray now.
Even standard definition movies from iTunes take a longer time to download than it takes me to drive to the local grocery store and rent a blu-ray from the RedBox machine. Even if they don't have what I want, Hollywood Video is within walking distance. I can be there and back in less time it takes to download a sub-DVD quality film from iTunes.
And again, wheres the convenience with all of the restrictions put on downloadable movies? If I download a movie from iTunes I have to watch it on my computer, my iPod, or my iPhone. If its a rental I can't even watch it on my 5.5G 80GB iPod because Apple likes to force people into buying new hardware all the time. If I want to hook my UniBody MacBook up to my HDTV to watch the movie I just downloaded, since I can't burn it to a disc, I have to get a mini-DisplayPort adapter to DVI, DVI to HDMI, connect the cables, connect an optical cable with a mini-TOSLink adapter, and then I have to go through the trouble of configuring my home theater system to take audio and video from two different sources when HDMI is designed to do it all in one cable.
And the best part of ALL of that is the fact that after I've connected the mess of cables, compared to the ONE HDMI cable on my blu-ray player, the SPDIF standard that optical cables use can NOT handle the high definition audio formats! So I'd have to spend HOURS downloading the film with equal image quality, go through the hassle of connecting endless amounts of cables, and go through the trouble of getting OS X to disable the built-in display of my MacBook without closing the lid and connecting an external keyboard and mouse, only to discover that the audio standards Apple has chosen to include in all of their Macs cannot handle the new audio formats. Lovely.
They probably don't know it exists or even care, surely not enough to drop $500 on a lousy box to play $30-$50 single movie discs.
Good Blu-Ray players can be had for just a little over $200. That includes Profile 2.0 players.
Movies range from $15-$25 these days with only a few hitting $30.
And a computer is not needed for Apple TV or Netflix's service.
And neither service compares to blu-ray. The "HD" service on both is roughly 3.5-4.5Mbps VC-1 or H.264 (4.5 and H.264 in Apple TV's case), 720p video. Netflix, in their blog, has stated that they cannot offer any sort of true surround sound (multi-channel digital audio) in their current setup, and Apple uses lower than DVD bitrate AC-3 (Dolby Digital).
Blu-Ray is 40Mbps+ H.264/VC-1 and on a handful of old releases MPEG-2, with uncompressed PCM or lossless compressed Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master HD audio.
Theres just no comparison. Thats like putting a golf cart in a street race against a Dodge Viper, with Netflix and Apple TV being the golf card and Blu-Ray being the Viper.
Apple TV/iTunes standard definition service is below DVD quality in terms of audio and video performance and Netflix, I can tell you from experience, might as well be VHS quality.
One final thing: I think people would rather stick with DVDs than go to Apple TV or Netflix streaming for HD. Sure Apple TV and Netflix "HD" might have a higher native resolution than DVD does. But at least upscaled DVDs don't have the massive amounts of compression artifacting that Apple TV HD and Netflix HD do. Plus DVDs tend to have a higher audio bitrate as well as options for DTS sound. Despite the higher native resolution of Apple TV HD and Netflix HD, DVDs still offer a better all around experience.
