Blu-ray Licensing to Get Easier and Cheaper

[*LTD*]

Honestly, I have never faced any situation in which I would say: damn it! I wish I had a Blu-ray disc (or HDDVD for that matter). My LCD TV is not Full-HD, so the difference between playing DVDs and BDs is probably close to nothing. Even if I had a Full-HD TV, given it is 32", I don't know if I would see a great difference (or if this difference would be worth the extra price of the player + BDs). In any case, if you really care about image quality, you won't use your computer to watch movies. You'll probably buy an external player.
I never use DVDs for backups. External hard drives are better for that, and they're better than BDs too. The price per Gb is so low now in external HDs that any other storage format shouldn't be an option.

I understand that content creators need to deliver their creations in BDs sometimes, but I guess that's not the situation for many people. I think, though, that people with these special needs are enriched in the Mac-user community. I think Apple should provide BD drives as an option (I, for example, don't want to pay the extra price for that, cause I don't need it) for professionals or anyone else who wants it.
I think options are always good: matte or glossy screens, BD or DVD drives, etc., you know, all those things that Apple, for obscure reasons, does not want to provide to customers.

The only real measure of what consumers think about this issue are Mac sales figures.

The rest is just internet chat forum BS that hardly anyone else cares about.

 

[ccuk]

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....



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.



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.



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).



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.



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!

I read your earlier post and nearly commented... then I just read this post and had to comment.

I haven't seen so much drivel since I went to play-school. Touting digital downloads as the death of optical media in the next two years is so far out of reality everything you just said about your AV equipment has lost all credibility... Which by the way I have something to remark on. You went hell for leather at mosx saying and I quote,

so spare me the "it's better because the numbers say so" trype

So why bore us with the long post about figures for your equipment. Come to mention it, according to the double blind tests you have read, you can't tell the difference between $100 and $4000 equipment, therefore why have you spent so much money? I'll leave that one there.

Returning back to Disneyland... Digital downloads and memory card based distribution will not rapidly overtake Blu-Ray in the next two years. Here is why... It has taken nearly 3 years for Blu-Ray to get to where it is, and it has not overtaken DVD; the same happened with the transition from VHS to DVD. Obtaining consumer adoption and trust takes time, and the Blu-Ray platform has longevity, something which the consumer will trust in time.

The issue with downloads is not so much compression it is size. I am personally not happy about paying the same price for a more compressed 720p digital download as compared with a much higher bit-rate, not to mention containing extra features, lossless audio, 1080p Blu-Ray based disk, however that's personal. On the point of the main issue; the speed of the internet and inherent cost of providing bandwidth and server space to serve content of that quality is prohibitively expensive. It is not going to change in the next two years, let alone 5-15 years. Many countries have an average speed of 2Mbit, that is simply not fast enough to sustain a digital platform of distribution. It also isn't easy to just lay new fibre where and when you want in order to supply 50+Mbit speeds to the home, which is the sort of speed you need to sustain said platform. Also we have another issue and that is ISPs who are struggling to keep up with the demand for more bandwidth and laying down ever more restrictive usage caps. The infrastructure of the internet was not designed with anything like this in mind, it needs a major overhaul.


Moving onto the future when we will be seeing Super HD and Ultra HD, download size will increase exponentially... And the Blu-Ray platform will offer a consumer trusted transition to those standards, 500GB and 1TB disks are planned for a reason. So whilst you may not need Blu-Ray for your amazing setup, others will and do.


I sense you were once bitten and are now twice shy over some equipment purchase and look to validate your stance on not purchasing something which claims to be a lot better, simply for the sake.

 

[SactoGuy18]

Folks,

We should have all gotten that warning when Comcast last year announced the 250 GB/month download limit--that should have told Apple right away that downloaded movies were NOT the way to go. And now more and more Internet Service Providers here in the USA are doing the same, not only to relieve the load on the entire network but also as a means to discourage the use of torrents on the network.

Given the facts that:

1) The price of Blu-ray console players and software have dropped tremendously recently.

2) The Blu-ray Disc Association announcing a one-stop lower-cost licensing policy.

3) The relatively strong sales of HDTV's with HDMI inputs.

4) The dowload limits I mentioned above.

5) The availability now of BD-RE drives that are thin enough to fit even inside the current MacBook Pro.

6) Apple's hardware design on the MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro is just about ready to support HDCP.

I do conclude that Apple will officially announce full Blu-ray drive support, possibly as early as when the new Mac Pros ship (they may be the first machines to support them). Apple may not offer Blu-ray support for the MacBook Pro and iMac until there is a steady supply of the new super thin BD-RE drives available.

 

[Tallest Skil]

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!

Drop the first sentence, please. Also, I'm on your side, so I don't exactly know where this attack came from.

And Apple will go belly-up in 2011 in that case, and no Blu-ray on Mac because Mac won't exist.

That's rather pathetic that you think that Blu-ray matters that much.

You and me and at least 150,000 other pro content creators.

That's not failure... that's retirement after a long profitable life for a technology-based product.

And at least a couple hundred thousand of us who DO own Apple computers, actually CREATE and DELIVER content for those folks. On the Windoze side, because Jobs had been too longsighted. As far as HD-DVD crybabies; get an LG player that plays both.

Thanks. You beat me to the punch.

Multiquote: Follow the forum rules and use it.

 

[VoR]

There used to exist comparisons back in the days of HDDVD vs Blu-ray discussions. They showed lists of movies with side by side comparisons showing details of each movie and what it was encoded with and the bit rate along with screen shots.

I can't find any of those sites any more. I was hoping to provide a link that showed all the movies and what compression was used to encode the movie. But I recall all of them using MPEG2 or VC-1 (microsoft's codec).

I don't know the latest, but I saw an article from back in 2005 stating that VC-1 beat out both MPEG2 and H.264 while MPEG2 beat out H.264. I couldn't find anything recent on the net about blu-ray and compression codec on the discs.

I did also find a bunch of Blu-ray authorizing companies complaining about the lack of H.264 documentation so they were just going with MPEG2 because there were default presets to encode at 20mbits/s or 40mbits/s with no real clear defaults to encode with H.264. Nobody ever got fired for doing what everyone else is doing...

Anyone have any insight to this topic?

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3338 - shows codec/bitrate

You were probably thinking of highdefdigest.com that did the hddvd/bluray side by side comparisons.

 

[happydude]

just gimme a mini with blue ray, mr. jobs and i'll be happy.

 

[actripxl]

This is a great topic by the sheer number of responses that have been given. The reality is blu ray is here and will be profitable, the majority of the people here prefer physical media as opposed to a few "loud" minority. That in it of its self should tells us that digital is still a long way off since most of are tech savy. Now once you factor in the average person and there is no way anyone can say that digital will take over with in the next 5 years.

On a side note thanks to all the physical media I turned in yesterday at Game Stop I now have $120 worth in credit for a future purchase on a PS3, funny thing is I didn't see anyone trading in their digital downloads for some reason.

 

[oban14]

With fast optic internet you can download one quicker than the time it would take you to get to the store, choose one, queue, buy it, and get back.

Except the picture will look worse and the audio will sound worse.

I guess both sides of this debate have their + and - points, but one thing we can be sure of is that in 20 years noone is going to watch blu-ray DVD's, and very few people are going to have the capability to play them, just like VHS tapes now, however a digital copy on your hard drive will still be able to be watched.[/QUOTE]

My disks will all play then, although I will have likely upgraded by then. What's your point? Also your drm laden file probably won't work in 20 years. Some dm audio formats from 5 years ago don't play anymore.

 

[xbjllb]

That's rather pathetic that you think that Blu-ray matters that much.

On the contrary, it's far more pathetic that attitudes like yours toward Blu-ray and pro content creators' need for it and their importance to Apple's bottom line is the VERY reason Apple will go under if they do not implement Blu-ray YESTERDAY.

 

[Tallest Skil]

On the contrary, it's far more pathetic that attitudes like yours toward Blu-ray and pro content creators' need for it and their importance to Apple's bottom line is the VERY reason Apple will go under if they do not implement Blu-ray YESTERDAY.

Why is it needed outside authoring movie disks and backup, which can be done now?

 

[xbjllb]

That's rather pathetic that you think that Blu-ray matters that much.

On the contrary, it's far more pathetic that attitudes like yours toward Blu-ray and pro content creators' need for it and their importance to Apple's bottom line is the VERY reason Apple will go under.

I guess both sides of this debate have their + and - points, but one thing we can be sure of is that in 20 years noone is going to watch blu-ray DVD's, and very few people are going to have the capability to play them, just like VHS tapes now, however a digital copy on your hard drive will still be able to be watched.

20 years from now people will download directly into the brain via implants.

So what? High-end Apple customers needed Blu-ray YESTERDAY.

Why is it needed outside authoring movie disks and backup, which can be done now?

What is pathethic is spending $10,000 plus on an Apple system and then having to use Windoze to author, proof, and even merely WATCH Blu-ray video.

NOTHING about Windoze should be superior to Mac OS. NO-THING.

And being able to do so on far cheaper PC hardware should give ALL Apple shareholders cold chills down their spines.

And another thing: Never before has so much energy been expended to rationalize the fact that Apple is BEHIND THE CURVE and BLATANTLY INFERIOR to the competition, by claiming ludicrously that the reason is because Apple is actually (and quite uselessly, I would add, IF it could even be true) a decade AHEAD of the curve.

 

[lftrghtparadigm]

The rants in this thread are hilarious. Good grief, get over it already. Everyone.

 

[Mad Mac]

So you don't mind carrying a bunch of disks with you when you travel on an airplane or train? I do.

And? Just because you can't deal with a pass case that holds 50 discs and adds maybe 1lb means that nobody else can? Nobody is making you get Blu-ray. Why are you and others against Blu-ray so adamant against people having it? It's bizzarre.

It's pretty arrogant of you to call people "lazy" when they prefer the convenience of digital downloads.

And it's pretty arrogant for people that don't want Blu-ray to be in a thread arguing against it, touting the benefits of digital downloads and how physical media is dead when in reality Blu-ray is superior in everything that relates to a movie (audio and video). The only thing it loses to digital downloads is "convenience". Hardly a reason to be up in arms about it. And again I ask of the Blu-ray detractors: if Blu-ray was an option, how does that affect any of you at all?

Saying iTunes HD is a "blurry mess" is a phenomenal exaggeration. What did people like you do when there was only DVD? Gouge your eyes out from the pain of watching SD video? How about VHS?

How is it a phenomenal exaggeration? The picture posted in this thread clearly shows that the bricks are a blur and are fairly sharp on Blu-ray. You can ignore it if you want but you can't deny it.

You realize that in the days of VHS and DVD the resolution on TVs did not come close to 1080P right? Now that we have monitors that are WAY beyond standard definition DVD (720 x 480) how can you not see the poor quality?

A 15" MBP has 1440 x 900 resolution and a 17" MBP has 1920 x 1200 resolution screen. That's 2X and 2.5X, respectively, what a DVD outputs in horizontal and vertical. So do you want to watch a DVD natively at ~1/4 the size of your laptop's screen? Or how about blowing it up to full screen and enjoying the ugly picture? Don't believe me? Take any jpeg at 720 x 480 and view it full screen on your laptop vs a 1920 x 1080 picture and tell me it looks the same.

Blu-ray is 1920 x 1080 and is a perfect 1:1 pixel match for the 17" MBP. So yes, a laptop would take advantage of Blu-ray's resolution despite what other's claim. Playing a standard def picture on a MBP is equivalent to playing a standard def picture on an HDTV. That's just silly. And to top it off, you can't even download iTunes HD on a MBP. So I've got a high res monitor but I can't view high res video? How is that not ridiculous?

No, you sat there and said how great your new purchase was, and said how horrible the previous generation was, so that you may justify your purchase.

Now your making zero sense. Technology improves with time. What was acceptable then is no longer good. I'm not going to buy a super high res 30" Apple Cinema Display and run it at VGA resolution. And if I claim that the 30" ACD blows away a 15" CRT monitor from the '80s are you going to say that I'm simply justifying my purchase? And BTW, VGA (600 x 400) is just slightly worse than DVD resolution. That's how ugly standard def is.

You guys will be saying the same thing when 4K disks are a reality. "How can you even stand Blu Ray? OMG, it's so blurry, the sound is so horrible!"

Exactly. When something better comes along you accept it as being better. Wait till you see how bad your iTunes movies look on a Super HD monitor. LOL.

Oh and btw, I couldn't give two squirts about the extras on a disk. I can count the times I've actually watched them on one hand. It's generally useless crap IMO.

Well, that's too bad. I enjoy seeing how special effects are done, the process of movie making, funny outtakes, alternate endings, etc. At least I have a choice with physical media. Downloaded media gives no choice. As a consumer, I like having choices. Novel concept, eh?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

It's amazing how the ever defensive mac crowd want to desperately believe that Apple are the ONLY company doing things right

I'm not sure where or how you get that idea from one thread on one subject, namely Blu-Ray versus downloadable/streaming formats of the present and near future that might compete with it for interest.

Can someone tell me what do you do when all your iTunes downloaded movies vanish because your hdd has given up the ghost?

That would be time to call in the backup drive(s). A person would have to be incredibly foolish not to use one (or more). A drive is NOT likely to fail at the "same time" as another drive either so that is a very poor argument.

or you lost that backup disk at the same time as your main hdd, or because apple think in it's wisdom you don't need firewire but your purchased movies are on a firewire hdd?

This is just plain illogical arguments based on nonsense. I'm not aware of ANY current firewire drive enclosures that are not ALSO USB and/or even E-Sata drives in addition to Firewire. As for Firewire, exactly ONE Mac currently doesn't have Firewire (the Uni-body Macbook). The plastic Macbook, the MBP, the Mac-Mini (the new one will have FW800), the Mac Pro and all the iMacs ALL have Firewire. I think it was a mistake for Apple to remove it from the new uni-body Macbook, but it's still just one model. Besides, if there were such a thing as a modern Firewire only drive, why would you own one or how would you have used it in the first place to back up your movies if your Mac doesn't have Firewire??? Like I said, your arguments are completely nonsensical.

They are a gimmick and won't ever replace a good solid medium and that future is BluRay.

I'm from the UK

Hard drives are a gimmick? Large plastic drink coasters are the future? I'm glad I don't live in the UK. I don't think it's hard to see that as bandwidth increase, the ability to download, store and move data between any number of devices is MUCH more useful than being stuck with DRM protected discs the size of the palm of my hand when smaller and smaller devices are becoming available all the time to store digital data on. This is partially the fault of the studios, though. DRM needs to go for the sake of convenience.

and a recent study put our average broadband speeds at 2mbps and I know
places that can't even get that. (I know some guy on here was touting his

How sad for you and your country. Maybe you could tell your politicians that the obscene tax rates you pay ought to be good for something. When you figure you could DRIVE around your entire country in a day or so, there is no excuse for slow communication.

I only have 5Mb/sec and a 720P HD movie rental starts in less than 1 minute. So with your meager 2MB/sec rate, it should take about 2.5-4 minutes to start (given buffering over the length of the movie). How horrible and unusable! But given you could drive to Scotland in all of about what, maybe 2 minutes? I suppose it would be faster to go rent a Blu-Ray.

And what are you supposed to do when sat in a hotel room with no internet connection, with BluRay can either rip them before hand or pop them into your drive while your there.

So you're saying this hotel doesn't have broadband, but they DO have Blu-Ray players in the room? That's bloody unlikely to coin a phrase from your country. Oh, did you mean to say you're using a notebook? Well, if it's a Mac (these are Mac forums after all) then it's even LESS likely than your supposed hotel to have a BD player in it. And IF you are using a PC (why bother coming here?) and it DOES have BD on it and you don't MIND watching a movie on a 13"-17" size screen and THINK you can see a big difference at that small size while sitting on the bed with it on your lap, I'd still have to comment that you CAN store movies on your hard drive. I have all 250+ DVDs I own on my server now. It's not hard for me to put them on my MBP or to even put them on my iPod Touch for that matter now that they're in an iTunes format. So why is it easier to watch a BD disc than an iTunes compatible movie again given the above?

An actual good point would be to make that Apple does not SELL 720P movies and this is a major shortcoming of their entire approach. I would also agree they SHOULD make BD players available for OS X and so the option should be up to the consumer what to watch. I'm completely against Apple trying to force anyone to buy stuff from the iTunes store and I would even agree that they are not trying very hard to make Apple TV more usable than it currently is.

On the other hand, when you compare Apple TV to Sonos or the Squeezebox, it suddenly appears much more useful and capable even in its current somewhat limited form as it does much more than either of them, especially when paired with an iPhone or iPod Touch as a remote. I currently can listen to over 5600 songs on either of my two Apple TV units. I can watch over 270 music videos. I can watch over 250 DVDs, a dozen converted VHS tapes and when I'm done, 80+ laserdiscs and a collection of home movies and a dozen photo albums, encompassing over 4000 photographs all on a 93" 720P HD projector system from my couch. Some want to tell me that it's not useful to do all that. Apple's interface and ability to play my music in every room in my house in sync with each other isn't helpful (especially during parties) and that somehow a PS3 will do better (even though it cannot sync around the house; it does not have a pocket WiFi video remote and it cannot rent me HD movies instead of making me drive across town to the nearest video store), but it's higher resolution even though my projector is currently limited to 720P. As a gaming device, it PALES compared to an XBox 360, but hey, it CAN game so I should buy one anyway even though I'd never use it to play games.

First: Blu-ray only plays Blu-ray? Are you dense? Blu-ray players play BDs, DVDs, and CDs. Some also have USB ports for various multimedia purposes. A few play streaming video from Netflix. One model streams Pandora radio. Only BD? Geez.

I think he was referring to the number one selling Blu-Ray player out there, known as the PS3. It does NOT play DVDs. Period. Besides, the way you worded it, you're wrong anyway. Blu-Ray only plays Blu-Ray. Combi-players (a term from the old Laserdisc days) are another matter. IF a Blu-Ray player plays DVDs it's because it's ALSO a DVD player. The laser pickup for BD will not read DVD (why PS3 won't play DVDs). It needs a 2nd pickup for DVDs. Streaming Pandora radio is more or less a computer function and so again has nothing to do with BD other than sharing the same space as the BD player.

I read your earlier post and nearly commented... then I just read this post and had to comment.

I haven't seen so much drivel since I went to play-school. Touting digital downloads as the death of optical media in the next two years is so far out of reality everything you just said about your AV equipment has lost all credibility... Which by the way I have something to remark on. You went hell for leather at mosx saying and I quote,

So why bore us with the long post about figures for your equipment. Come to mention it, according to the double blind tests you have read, you can't tell the difference between $100 and $4000 equipment, therefore why have you spent so much money? I'll leave that one there.

Where did I say anything about the "death of optical media"? Pointing out the obvious (that physical media WILL eventually be moot in the future when you can download anything in a short amount of time) is not saying that physical media won't still exist. I still have lasediscs from the late '80s and early '90s. They aren't dead. They still play. That doesn't mean I want to use them. I'm in the process of converting them and my VHS tapes that weren't made to DVD or contain home movies, etc. to MP4 as I already have my DVD collection. There is a place down the road that rents VHS tapes still. So I guess they're not dead either. But do you want to watch VHS tapes if you have a choice??? I don't.

As for my system, there's a difference between posturing/bragging and imaginary need for expensive equipment and an actual need for high quality equipment to produce good quality sound. The fact you are questioning my choices tell me you know absolutely NOTHING about the equipment I own. The Carver ribbon speakers I have (the price comparisons to the Genesis models using the same ribbons is to show how valued they are and thus portray their sound quality nature. The AL-III retailed for $2000/pair. I got mine on clearance from Huppins Hi-Fi (aka One Stop in Oregon) and shipped across the country for $1175. However, speakers ARE the one conclusive area where laying down more money CAN give you better quality sound so I would not question someone who spent $5000 for a pair of Martin Logans IF they truly preferred the sound of those electrostatics (I personally didn't care for their imaging or their anemic bass that's hard to match to a sub).

In this case, the AL-III has a sensitivity rating of 87dB per 1 watt @ 1 meter. In short, these speakers need a lot of power to produce acceptable levels of sound. So no, a 100 watt pioneer receiver probably isn't going to do the trick if I want to reach the 115dB peaks that I CAN reach in my living room. With the custom active crossover I have for them, between removing the somewhat nasty inductive load the passive crossover gave them and making it purely resistive into 4 ohms and other passive losses along with bi-amping, they are now pretty much 90dB per 1 watt @ 1 meter and with the amplifiers I have, I can reach 115dB peaks for dynamic range. That is not to say I normally play them that loud, but if you want realism, you better have the capability unless you like soft elevator music.

Now, how much did I actually SPEND on amplification? Just because I TALKED about a $4000 Krell, that doesn't mean I bought one. I got the Class A/AB Yamaha USED (it was 8 years old when I bought it; it's now over 20 years old and runs like new still) for around $250. I got the Carver THX 350 watt (into 4 ohms) amplifier brand new for around $450. My C-5 Sonic Holography Pre-amp was also around $300 as was the active crossover. So my total investment for speakers plus amplifier stages was about $2500 (retail was well over $4500). I didn't buy those amplifiers based on "sound" but on need for amplification to achieve dynamic range with my speakers of choice, which I spent over 6 months auditioning various alternatives but kept coming back to the Carver Ribbons for their utterly realistic female vocal reproduction (I listen to a lot of Tori Amos and she sounds as if she's in the room with these speakers; $2500/pr B&W monitors produced similar quality vocals but didn't have bass. I would have had to spend over $5000 for speakers (let alone amplification) to get similar goosebumps with conventional speakers and that's only one aspect of the sound. There's also the dipolar imaging and effortless transients ribbons provide. In any case, it's suffice to say my choices for electronics were based on sound decisions, not hocus pocus imaginary differences. I already had one of my two electronics degrees by the time I bought them and so my fancy for flash had diminished as I learned the truth about the underlying hardware.

 

[jbode]

Who wants to buy a PS3 or spend 100s on a blu-ray player, yeah it looks amazing with the right TV, but it will be better for everyone when computers have the blu-ray feature as it will open up tons of new doors for better performing computers and insane blu-ray disc features - I can't wait!

 

[xbjllb]

No Blu-ray... glossy screens... Apple, meet Amigaworld

http://www.pcworld.com/article/160608/mac_fans_fume_about_updated_desktops.html

It's probably too late for Apple to add Blu-ray now... the death spiral for their desktops is in.

And apparently I'm not alone in that observation.

That's what happens to a company that craps on its high-end customers in a chase for the lowest common denominator.

Blu-ray... a bag of hurt for Apple and it's demise. Who knew Steve was hellbent on taking Apple with him?

 

[techfreak85]

What is pathethic is spending $10,000 plus on an Apple system....

really? $10,000?
Ten thousand dollars?
maybe $1,000...
idk. i didn't send 10,000 bucks on my computer.... if i had that money id go buy a car...
haha... typo?

 

[xbjllb]

really? $10,000?
Ten thousand dollars?
maybe $1,000...
idk. i didn't send 10,000 bucks on my computer.... if i had that money id go buy a car...
haha... typo?

Nopo. And when Apple gets off its ass and incorporates Blu-ray, then and only then they'll get my $10,000 PLUS.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

Nopo. And when Apple gets off its ass and incorporates Blu-ray, then and only then they'll get my $10,000 PLUS.

Until Apple integrates Blu-Ray into its products. I am going to boycott buying Macs.

I won't have a need to upgrade at all until Apple starts to properly support Blu-Ray.

this is getting beyond frustrating.

 

[xbjllb]

Until Apple integrates Blu-Ray into its products. I am going to boycott buying Macs.

I won't have a need to upgrade at all until Apple starts to properly support Blu-Ray.

this is getting beyond frustrating.

Or if you really need to upgrade, upgrade to a used matte-screen iMac from a private party.

Makes no money whatsoever for Apple, and saves a ton of money.

 

[brewser]

I'm starting to care about having a Blu Ray drive in my Mac now because I finally got an HDTV a month ago. Now that I'm buying my movies on Blu Ray instead of DVD, I have no way of ripping them to my iPod.

This may have already been mentioned but I am not going through all the replies. I use an external LG Blu-Ray burner and have to use a program in Windows called AnyDVDHD. This will rip the Blu-Ray. You then need to get the Turbo 264 adaptor from Elgato and drag in the video .mts file and it will create the iPhone/iPod/iTV conversion for you.
I can't recommend the Turbo 264 enough. This is a great product and very fast.

 

[mBox]

What is pathethic is spending $10,000 plus on an Apple system and then having to use Windoze to author, proof, and even merely WATCH Blu-ray video.

Maybe off topic but currently my Blu-Ray Authoring has been:
Mac = 12, PC = 0.

Im using LaCie, Toast 9 and Encore CS4 for different types of authoring/burning.
Most creative are from Maya, After Effects, FCP and Avid/XDCAM.

I guess to stay on topic, yes Id welcome a better authoring solution.
As far as playing, I never ever tested using a computer when DVD Authoring, why would I start now with BD?

 

[Beam42]

G'day kastenbrust,

The only useful use for blu-ray is for data backup, and macs can do that already using an external blu-ray drive or one of these which you can build into your Macbook Pro:
http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=338

ok so we cant watch blu-ray movies, but id rather buy them in the iTunes store anyway. I think Apples trying to move away from disc media as it goes away from their whole iPod digital media philosophy.

To be honest there isn't much point watching blu-ray on a screen smaller than 30 inches anyway.

Speaking as a Videographer... I just want to be able to put out my footage etc. on something that is widely used and has better quality picture than DVD.

By the way thanks for the link to Fastmac's super Blu-ray... I'm a newbie Mac convert.


Regards

Beam42

 

[AidenShaw]

Some interesting Blu-ray/HDTV stats

Copied from https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7252115#post7252115

Blu-ray [edit] is DEAD. Unless you wanna watch "HD" movies in a 13" screen, of course.

You don't understand the issue - it's not whether the 13.3" screen is ideal for seeing full 1080p quality.

The issue is that we're buying BD movies for our home systems, and we can play them on our Windows machines just fine.

Apples can't play them, though. Are we supposed to buy both BD discs and DVD discs just because of Apple's pig-headedness? Or are we supposed to buy Windows systems from other companies if we want to play BD discs? (The latter works for me. )

By the way, I'd rather watch a 1920x1080 BD movie scaled *down* to fit the 13.3" 1280x800 screen, rather than the 640x480 (or sometimes 720x480) DVD movie scaled *up* to fit!

And, of course, the video professionals and amateurs would like to author Blu-ray titles on their Macs, but that's another discussion entirely.

A tiny fraction of the world's population has a 40" screen, or even plans to buy one.

Perhaps you should look and see that 10 of the top 16 bestselling TVs at Amazon are 40" or larger.... In fact, 6 of the top 16 are 52" sets. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172659/ref=pd_ts_e_nav

And, while you're at Amazon, notice that 3 of the top 5 selling "DVD" players are actually Blu-ray players! http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172514/ref=pd_ts_e_nav

BD's [edit] adoption rate is so dragged that it can't even be compared to music CDs or DVDs in the past.

Fortunately, your opinion doesn't match up with the facts about Blu-ray.

Blu-ray Sales on the Rise in Japan
March 6, 2009 by Josh Dreuth

According to a recent report from GfK Marketing Services Japan Ltd (GfK Japan), sales of Blu-ray Disc recorders increased by over 800% last year in Japan. In 2007, only 160,000 Blu-ray Disc recorders were sold in the country, but that number jumped to 1.34 Million units in 2008, representing a huge uptake in adoption of the high definition format.

The overall optical disc market decreased by 1%, but DVD recorders dipped by 26% as the format gives up ground to Blu-ray. Last year, Blu-ray recorders represented 37% of all optical recorder sales (53% of revenue), and that number is expected to grow substantially this year.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=2469
​

and

Blu-ray is being adopted faster than DVD
January 3, 2009 by Mike Ferro

It was a stellar holiday season for Blu-ray with movies like The Dark Knight breaking records. According to two research firms, Blu-ray movies and players were top on most holiday shopper's list. This is pretty much what I predicted a few months back when I compared Blu-ray as this year's Tickle me Elmo.

According to DVDFile, surveys conducted by both, Greenfield and Zogby International, Blu-ray players and movies were ranked high on holiday shopper's lists. In the survey conducted by Greenfield, it also indicated that Blu-ray players were number one on the list of HD TV owners. The survey conducted by Zogby revealed similar results ranking Blu-ray players as second on the list after HD TV.

I indicated that there will be a strong correlation between HD TV adoption and Blu-ray, and these two studies definitely show this to be true. Blu-ray sales are starting to eat away at DVD sales, similarly to how DVD sales ate away at VHS sales over 10 years ago. According to Richard Greenfield, analyst for Pali Capital, indicated that results for 2008 are expected to show a decrease in DVD sales by 6%. This is in contrast to original predictions of flat sales for the year.

Greenfield also indicated that the adoption rate for Blu-ray is much faster than DVD was. He states, "Interestingly, two years into the standard DVD cycle, the DVD installed base was only 1.2 million and players were not nearly as inexpensive as $129 [BD players were] on Black Friday." As indicated before, Blu-ray sales are twice of that of DVDs at the same point in its life.

I predict that the Blu-ray adoption rate is actually much faster than twice that of DVDs when you consider out of the two years on the market, only one year was really spent as the sole format. The first year was spent battling it out with HD-DVD splintering the market in half while leaving many on the fence. This holiday definitely showed that consumers have made the jump to Blu-ray.

http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.cfm?ID=18670
​

and

Blu-ray Dominates Christmas Sales
Jan 5, 2009 by Scott Nichols

Back before Thanksgiving I predicted that Blu-ray sales would suffer during the holiday season due to the high cost of both the player and HDTVs combined with the current economic recession, among other reasons. But after seeing the report from the British Video Association declaring Blu-ray sales have risen almost 400 percent for the 2008 holiday season over the same period of time last year, it is clear that I was wrong.

Across the whole holiday season 3.7 million Blu-ray units were sold in Britain, and that doesn't include sales of Sony's Playstation 3 console, which also plays Blu-ray movies. A large contributing factor to the rise in Blu-ray sales was the release of the movies The Dark Knight and Mama Mia on Blu-ray. The Dark Knight sold almost 300,000 copies in its first few weeks, becoming the fastest selling Blu-ray title to date. Mama Mia was no slouch either selling 5.1 million copies by year-end.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/156327/blu_ray_holiday_sales.html?tk=rss
​

 

[AidenShaw]

A drive is NOT likely to fail at the "same time" as another drive either so that is a very poor argument.

This is actually not true in many cases.

One of the stronger predictors of drive failure is that drives with similar serial numbers have failed. This is because failures are not always random - they are often linked to manufacturing defects in firmware, assembly or materials. (E.g. "drives made in Singapore plant #3 between March and May are failing at a higher than expected rate")

In particular, note that a RAID with parity (e.g. RAID-60, RAID-50, RAID-6, RAID-5...) array made with drives with similar serial numbers is more at risk than one would expect.

If you have any of the recent Seagate 1TB and 1.5TB drives, this will be pretty obvious to you.

The best approach is to assume that any drive will fail, and at the worst possible time.