Gullible? Yeah right. Gullible is paying good money to own a lower quality product (audio and video) for the sake of convenience.
Don't forget about expense too. And what defines lower quality? Look at the post awhile back that shows the actual differences. They're not as great as people like you would want us to believe. The point is there exists a point of diminishing returns as well as convenience issues (including the time it takes for a BD movie to finally start, whether it will override your machine to force you to watch ads, etc.) and of course the high price of the discs themselves.
The future is clearly heading towards download/stream and store on large hard drives (which are getting larger every day). The best move I ever made was to encode all my DVDs to M4V to play off AppleTV. No more FBI warnings, slow menus, ad overrides, stupid blocks to change audio tracks during the film, etc. I just get easy access to the movie including multiple soundtracks. Handbrake at high quality is nearly identical to the DVD. That solves it for my DVDs. It's only a matter of time before the equivalent of Blu-Ray is available without the discs (which I don't really want in the long run. Who wants a lousy jukebox player (is there one for BD yet?) when you can have unlimited (if you have enough hard drive space) storage of ALL media on a single server that can serve the entire house? THAT is why the future is NOT a disc format. A disc is OK for some distribution and archival purposes, but I want my movies on a server for easy access and transfer to mobile devices, etc. Why should we have to be limited any longer? I can get a 16GB USB flash drive the size of my thumbnail now! In a few years, that will likely be 200GB. Who needs giant discs anymore....
Gullible is paying for a product with missing features (outtakes, commentary, behind-the-scenes).
That's not gullible. It's simply a different set of priorities. Some of us couldn't care less about watching retarded outtakes and behind-the-scen GARBAGE. Yes, it's garbage because it's a waste of time. If I wanted to watch producer crap, I'd be a producer. Let them bring me the final product so I can view it, not watch them put it together (yawn). I COULD have transferred extras over when I encoded my DVDs. The only extra I included was the commentary tracks and I doubt I will even ever use those. I've got better things to do with my time than spend 2 hours listening to a bunch of old dudes making boring comments on why they used this wide lens on this shot and how Jackie Chan kept flubbing his English lines up all the time. Thanks, but no thanks. Give me a lower price and flexibility to watch the movie on my mobile devices and I'm good, thanks.
Gullible is thinking that downloads are convenient. You can't take that download and play it wherever like you can with physical media.
Quite the contrary, I'm afraid. Try to get your BD disc onto your iPod Touch, for example. Try to transfer it to your laptop to carry with you 200 movies (do you really want to carry 200 DVDs onto an airplane? Really???). Your idea of portable clearly lacks imagination. It's MORE portable when it's on your hard drive than on some plastic drink coaster. I can fit a dozen DVDs onto a USB flash drive the size of my thumbnail! You'd rather carry 12 DVDs and maybe their cases too? Have fun with that.
And last I checked, Blu-ray is available as an option from every other PC manufacturer. Nobody is forcing you to buy it. On the flipside, Apple is trying to force you to iTunes since they won't give you the option of Blu-ray. Only ignorant people give up freedom of choice for convenience.
I don't get your insulting language except to figure you are trolling. If I want Blu-Ray, I can buy a stand-alone Blu-Ray player or even a PS3. Why does it have to be on my Apple laptop in order to not get someone like yourself to label me as ignorant? I'm not going to use my laptop to watch BD movies. There's no point to it. The screen is small and I've got better things to do with a $2k laptop than use it for movie time anyway. That's what a BD player is for and it belongs in my home theater room not in my den.
I'd prefer it be dumped onto a server hard drive. Actually, it's possible to do that now, but the software is PC only for the moment. Actually, come to think of it, I can run Windows on my Intel Macs so that wouldn't be an issue either with an external BD drive. I'm sure a native Mac solution will eventually present itself (online 'solutions' already exist, of course).
How can you compare two screenshots from a non calibrated source?
The colors and black levels are not set the same.
And the ATV actually looks better here. Look at the tree on the left.
I'm sure if they were calibrated to match the BD would be better, but these pics prove nothing.
So you need accurate color rendition in order to prove encoding distortions or lack of detail/resolution differences? Give me a freaking break. You are just making up excuses for the fact BD isn't the end-all be-all GARGANTUAN difference certain people in this thread claim it to be.
Okay, let's assume that with the next Apple TV update that we'll be able to buy and rent 1080p movies in iTunes. You will not need a computer for them.
You do not need a computer for current digitally-bought movies.
I see we have yet another genius in the house. WTF do you think a BD player is internally? Let me clue you in. It's not a toaster! You're splitting hairs if you think a disc driven BD player or PS3 is really any different from an AppleTV. No, you seem make trivial naming differences where none exist. Go buy a popcorn A110 if that makes you feel better. It'll play the same M4V encodes that my AppleTV will play as will a PS3. All of them can play the movie files over the network. And that latter fact is what separates the future from the past. Physical discs are simply a storage medium. I don't care if you download or encode, the movie is still just digital DATA and the data is all that matters, not the distribution format. Get over it. Physical media is on its last leg when you can get 32GB onto a format the size of my thumbnail! Give it another year and that will be 64GB (more than BD). Two years from that and that 64GB micro card will be under $10. Why would ANYONE want to be using GIANT plastic platters two years from now? That's what you are buying today! Have fun encoding THEM also two years from now and the rest of us will tell you we told you so!
