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Blu-ray Licensing to Get Easier and Cheaper
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Because I still can, because I have an internal player for my Haswell Mac Pro and a standalone player for my HDTV, because there is an extensive library of titles, and because... they're cheaper than Blu-ray!
The only Blu-ray movie I have is of Serenity... and I have the HD DVD of it, too.
We won't get 4320p by 2020. The next standard Joe Consumer gets is 2160p, which will probably be called SuperHD or UltraHD. If Sony bumps up Blu-ray to 4 layer discs, it will have the capacity to do 2160p now but the platform would have to go to a new Profile standard for increased resolution output and it would be wise to crank up the Mbps rate.
For those on here whining about HD DVD, put a sock in it. That was Microsoft's baby and in no way did it come close to Blu-ray. Just as the Wii is a GameCube 1.5, HD DVD was an incremental upgrade to DVD. They (Toshiba and Microsoft) wanted to retain the red laser for its use while Sony and its allies insisted on moving to blue laser. Blu-ray has the better transfer rate than HD DVD and Blu-ray uses Java instead of Microsoft tech to provide the interactive menus, not to mention favoring high bit rate AVC encoding versus HD DVD's rather pathetic bit rate with inferior VC-1.
Marginal increase?
Oh come on!
Just because you can't see the difference because your eyesight isn't what it used to be doesn't mean that the rest of us can't see a pretty big difference.
To have a BlueRay disk with writing ability is what I'm looking for on my Mac. I was about to buy an HP just for that purpose, now I will wait
Intel was also on the HD DVD board, and HD DVD doesn't use a red laser, so I'm wondering where you get your sources.
You can do that NOW...
Because I still can, because I have an internal player for my Haswell Mac Pro and a standalone player for my HDTV, because there is an extensive library of titles, and because... they're cheaper than Blu-ray!
The only Blu-ray movie I have is of Serenity... and I have the HD DVD of it, too.
It's not dead yet, i agree!
But it WILL BE very shortly
Sorry, to break this to you but both DVD and Blu-Ray sales decline in 2008. The DVD decline is happening faster than that of the VHS tape and Blu-Ray is declining at a even faster rate.
You say that people won't want to setup a set top device? Hmm, isn't that what Blu-Ray is? People are streaming and downloading movies in HD from Xbox Live, AppleTv, Netflix and Cable's own OnDemand service. And here's the kicker even Sony sees that downloading/streaming is the future and have begun offering this for the PS3.
In this new "Green" world physical media just doesn't have a place.
And remember higher/better quality doesn't always win, a few good examples include Beta Tape (superior to VHS and also a Sony product), Laser Discs (superior to both video tape formats), PS3 (superior than the Wii, but a distant third in the game console markets behind the Wii and Xbox 360), CDs (better sound quality than MP3 and AAC, but lost an establish market). People like cheap and easy and are tired of replacing their entire movie collections every couple of years.
You must be vision impaired because the difference between a Blu-ray disc [1080p] versus an NTSC DVD disc [480p] is 600 lines of resolution. That 600 line resolution figure is greater than the entire total resolution of your precious DVDs.
DVD in terms of resolution was barely a 200 line increase over VHS.
HD streaming does not compare to Blu-ray because first of all, it is mainly in 720p and secondly, the streaming options have a majorly inferior Mbps frame/transfer rate which becomes all the more noticeable on a larger television screen.
I won't stream HD content nor watch non-upscaled DVDs on my 42" 1080p Sony Bravia television.
Not to mention Caps and Internet pricing
One thing to consider here is with all of the downloading/streaming thats going on with your Tivo, and On Demand and Netflix Movies and iTunes Movies ... I foresee a future not to distant where Internet providers are gonna cap bandwidth, cap how much you can transfer in a month and then charge you if you want to go over that. Isn't that what is kinda happening already.
So I say bring on the physical media besides who would spend 50k on a home theater system and want to watch a movie in surround sound?
I love my mac. It is promised to be ahead of the game and loaded with ground breaking technology. And it is. But I have to burn my 1080p movies with a windows machine. Do you know how much I hate that?
It's like getting branded with a hot Microsoft logo in my eye!!!!!!
One thing to consider here is with all of the downloading/streaming thats going on with your Tivo, and On Demand and Netflix Movies and iTunes Movies ... I foresee a future not to distant where Internet providers are gonna cap bandwidth, cap how much you can transfer in a month and then charge you if you want to go over that. Isn't that what is kinda happening already.
So I say bring on the physical media besides who would spend 50k on a home theater system and want to watch a movie in surround sound?
I love my mac. It is promised to be ahead of the game and loaded with ground breaking technology. And it is. But I have to burn my 1080p movies with a windows machine. Do you know how much I hate that?
It's like getting branded with a hot Microsoft logo in my eye!!!!!!
HD DVD was originally intended to use a red laser. It was one of the reasons why Sony withdrew the Blu-ray specs from the certification process from the DVD Forum and ultimately helped set up the Blu-ray Disc Association.
The only reason why Intel was a member of the HD DVD group was because HD DVD was intended to use a Pentium4 as its CPU. Sony and other manufacturers wanted to be able to use all sorts of CPUs and decoder chips from other sources...and that is why Intel backed HD DVD.
Please feel free to review the history of that unnecessary format war that Microsoft perpetuated behind the scenes by using Toshiba as its proxy [some would say "biotch"] in order to purposefully hurt the launch of the Playstation3.
And that's another thing that is hurting Blu-Ray sales are the upscaling DVDs and TVs that can also do the upscaling.
Imagine you buy a nice new HD TV and it automatically upscales your DVD. My Pioneer Elite does this and it's really nice.
We compared a Blu-Ray movie to the same movie on DVD and it was very close. Yes the Blu-Ray was better, but not worth re-purchasing the movie (something that drove the DVD market).
So close that my friend actually returned his Blu-Ray player.
This is a cheap argument. It may be right for some of the forum's zealots, but you are oversimplifying by putting all the streaming fans into that class.
I for one would not mind a Blueray option in the MacPro, iMac, MacMini or whatever. More choice, more freedom.
But more importantly, I hate that if I want a notebook with an ethernet connection and more memory than a MacBook Air, I have to carry around a stupid 20th century optical drive. And no, for me the solution is not replacing it by a Blueray drive to have a 21st century optical drive. I do not want to carry around an optical drive that I'm using maybe once a year (if at all).
So an external blue ray drive for installing software etc. would totally fit my needs, but please save the space and the weight in the notebook for something more useful.
One thing to consider here is with all of the downloading/streaming thats going on with your Tivo, and On Demand and Netflix Movies and iTunes Movies ... I foresee a future not to distant where Internet providers are gonna cap bandwidth, cap how much you can transfer in a month and then charge you if you want to go over that. Isn't that what is kinda happening already.
So I say bring on the physical media besides who would spend 50k on a home theater system and want to watch a movie in surround sound?
I love my mac. It is promised to be ahead of the game and loaded with ground breaking technology. And it is. But I have to burn my 1080p movies with a windows machine. Do you know how much I hate that?
It's like getting branded with a hot Microsoft logo in my eye!!!!!!
I already had post this and yes Comcast is already put a cap at 250GB a mouth and if you keep going over that you will lose your internet.. Other ISP are looking to follow what Comcast is doing.. So it is happening as we speak (write).. Also if you do not have phone (VOIP) with your cable company or what ever your ISP is.. Then you will eating up your bandwidth because it lands under streaming...
P.S. I sorry but I will keep my Blu-ray and DVD movies.. I will not and have not bought download movies or stream them from my Mac, Xbox360 and PS3... I am going to keep on buying Blu-ray movies because it sounds and Looks way better then any upscaled DVD or a download movies will even be...
MikeTheC, regular MacRumors poster, has just announced an even newer Blu-ray licensing strategy which is even less expensive for consumers and systems manufacturers, and promises to be compatible to a far greater degree with many operating system platforms as well as hardware architectures.
In other related news, Sony Entertainment America Chairman Michael Lynton is scheduled to be dressed in colorful, traditional Mexican fiesta clothes and hitched to a tree in one of San Jose's parks where he will be beaten like a piñata by several of Apple's senior executives. Speculations of Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs attending this upcoming "cultural licensing exchange" event, as it has been dubbed by insiders, have yet to be confirmed.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...=1&q=2008+blu-ray+sales+compared+2007&spell=1 wrong.
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6628383.html A lot of people think of DVD as an overnight success, but actually if you look back, we have some data from CEA market research that shows three years into the launch of DVD 5.4 million players had shipped into the U.S. market. So if you are comparing DVD to Blu-ray we are actually looking at a considerably larger number of players that have shipped in only 2.5 years into the life of Blu-ray, so we are doing quite well.
"Color TV registered a little more than 3 percent household penetration after three years, CD was a little less than 2 percent after three years, and DVD saw about 4 percent penetration after three years. In contrast, Blu-ray players are seeing a nearly 8 percent household penetration rate after two and half years, Parsons said."
Blu-ray is doing quite well, despite the economy, and is growing faster than DVD did.
I said people don't want to use complex devices that are limited in scope, such as the Apple TV and the Roku box. The sales of the two devices prove that. Even though the Apple TV sales were up last year, they still pale in comparison to blu-ray and even iPod sales.
Have you seen the Netflix streaming selection? I'm a Netflix member and I can tell you from experience that its terrible. Anyone who buys a Roku box for it is stupid. Not only that but the quality is terrible. The HD streaming on Xbox Live and Roku is worse than Apple TV. VC-1 video encoded at either 3.5Mbps or so or 4Mbps. 720p. And no 5.1 sound. Don't even get me started on how awful the SD quality is. Might as well be VHS upscaled to 640x480.
Cable's On Demand services are of MUCH higher quality than any internet based company. It's typically 1080i at 20Mbps MPEG-2. Still WELL behind Blu-ray but well above Netflix and Apple TV, as well as Microsoft's "HD" video store on Live!.
Actually, the higher quality product here DID win. Blu-ray beat HD DVD and its growing faster than DVD did.
Also, people need to learn that Beta, at the time of launch against VHS, was NOT superior. Sure it had a slightly higher resolution, but those first few generations of Beta tapes could NOT hold a full length feature movie at a higher quality than VHS. On top of that, Sony would not license the technology to any one else, while JVC licensed it to anyone and everyone.
So people need to stop this "Beta beat VHS!" nonsense because its simply not true. At that time Beta was NOT superior to VHS AND Sony's licensing killed it before it even had a chance, after it did finally become "better". And even when it finally was technically better, the market had decided on VHS.
Laser Disc? Are you serious? While it technically had a higher resolution than VHS, it was plagued with problems. CLV discs didn't look as good as CAV discs. But CAV discs basically meant that you had to get up 3 to 4 times during your average movie to flip or swap a disc out. Let's not forget the laser rot issue, which basically gave the discs shorter lifespans than your average VHS tapes. Its not fun when you have to get up every 30 minutes to flip or switch a foot wide disc that won't even last a few years because of poor quality glue.
Thats because the PS3 is overpriced, underpowered, and Sony's arrogance turned everyone off to the device. People only bought the Wii because its cheap. Look at the Xbox360. Now that its $199 its selling like hotcakes, even in this economy.
Theres several things wrong with this argument as well.
First of all, CDs haven't lost their market. Sure, sales are down dramatically, but CDs still move more music than online stores.
Second, most people are listening to music in their car, with iPod pack-in earbuds, some $100 boombox CD changer from Walmart, or other low quality headphones like Bose or some Sony in-ear set. So they can't tell the difference between a CD and low quality AAC or MP3 file.
Third and most importantly, I can go buy a song from Napster, iTunes, Amazon, Zune, Real, or any of the other online music stores out there, even in the DRM days, and burn it to a CD that will play anywhere on anything. I can even legally rip that CD back into another lossy format to play on a device other than what the DRM originally restricted you to. Back a few years ago, I knew people who didn't even own iPods yet but they were buying music from iTunes. Why? Because they could burn it to CD.
You simply cannot do that with video. If I buy a video from Amazon, I'm stuck with a handful of WMV devices to play it on. If I buy a video from iTunes I can play it on my computer, my iPod, my iPhone, and an Apple TV. I can't burn it to disc or even play it in the software of my choice.
Music succeeded online because of the fact that, even with DRM, you could still do what you wanted with it. Even if you bought a song from iTunes you could legally play it on anything, whether it be an iPod, a CD, or legally ripped back (though with a bit of quality loss that most people won't notice anyway) to another format. With online video you simply can not do that. That is why blu-ray and DVD will continue to live on for many many years to come. Both offer higher quality than you get online right now. DVD is still leagues above the standard definition content on iTunes, Amazon, Xbox, Netflix, and OnDemand/PPV services, in terms of video and especially audio. And blu-ray just mops the floor with everything else. 4.5Mbps H.264 720p video with a lower bitrate than the DVD 5.1 soundtrack just does not compare to 40Mbps 1080p H.264 video with uncompressed PCM or lossless compressed audio.
On top of all of that, blu-ray and DVD have the advantage of being able to be played anywhere and anything in the case of DVD, and nearly everything for blu-ray. Nearly any PC built within the last 3 years that doesn't have an Intel GPU has the horsepower to run blu-ray movies. A simple $129 external blu-ray reader that requires no more installation than plugging in a USB cable will do. You get that and you can play it on any nearly any Windows PC that has a Core 2 Duo or 3GHz P4/Athlon64 2GHz (those things are 6 years old now so don't tell me people don't have equal systems), and any nvidia or ATI GPU from the last 3 years.
To make it short, physical media will still live on well into the next decade and probably even beyond that. Why? Quality. Blu-ray discs have been developed that can handle 200GB. That means you can put full length movies on a single disc that would run at bitrate of about 160Mbps. Universal compatibilty. DVDs, CDs, and blu-rays can be played anywhere on nearly anything. I know people who own iPods who still burn CDs for their cars because its cheaper and easier than buying an $80 FM transmitter that requires changing the station preset every few miles. Plus ease of use. When I got my first blu-ray player a few weeks ago, I plugged in 2 cables, power and HDMI, I turned it on. It asked me my TV resolution and if I wanted "the highest quality audio". After that and ever since then I've been able to pop in a blu-ray disc and enjoy the movie with the best picture my TV has to offer and uncompressed/lossless audio. No fussing with internet connections, no advanced configuration of any kind like other streaming devices require.
Theres a lot more to it than that
The total pixel count for DVDs is 345,600 pixels onscreen at a time. Blu-ray is 2,073,600. Blu-ray offers 6 times the pixel count of DVD.
I have The Dark Knight and Transformers on blu-ray and DVD (yes two copies of each).
The difference between the two is completely night and day. In fact, its staggering how much better The Dark Knight looks. Thats using my Sony BDP-S350 blu-ray player to upscale, as well as my PC (all properly configured according to the instructions over at AVS) to play DVDs. Blu-ray is better than DVD in more ways than DVD was better than VHS.
@ mosx:
That was quite a thing you talked about there. However, I'm not sure how Blu-ray addresses my own needs, since I don't watch TV and rarely watch movies. Also, how do you hook up a Blu-ray player to an RCA Proscan and get 1080p out of it? I'm really not clear on that point.
That was quite a thing you talked about there. However, I'm not sure how Blu-ray addresses my own needs, since I don't watch TV and rarely watch movies. Also, how do you hook up a Blu-ray player to an RCA Proscan and get 1080p out of it? I'm really not clear on that point.
Obviously Blu-ray is a consortium, but Panasonic holds the most patents and therefore receives the most royalties.
Some people in this world are even more stunningly full of it than I imagined.
First of all, business. I posted a link to this like 24 hours ago. What does it take to get credit? But I digress. Too many points to hit.
Optical media are about as dead as the NFL (or EPL or La Liga for you Europeans). I pray that the people claiming optical media are dead are literally children. I buy some software online and maybe a few TV shows. But where does the vast majority come from? Uh, optical media. iLife '09, iWork '09, Mac OS X -- guess what? None of them are available for download! Basically, if you think optical discs are dead, you're just f#@%ing stupid.
Blu-ray is not dead. In fact, it was one of the few sectors that saw growth this holiday season in the US. The USA Today story I read said it was growing faster than DVD was at this point in their life cycles. If you don't think Blu-ray Disc players and movies are worth it yet, HOLY CRAP DON'T BUY ONE. How long was it until EVERYBODY you knew had a DVD player? One of the best things about the emergence of Blu-ray is the player makes your old DVDs look better -- and still plays them. None of those stupid DVD/VHS combos, no need to ditch a single DVD in your collection. The players have been dropping like crazy and the TV shows/movies have been dropping a bit as well. Go look at Smallville Season 6 at Amazon. It's about $35 on BD. You still have to shop around so places like Circuit City don't rip you off with $35 movies and $80 TV series.
I pity the fools who think 1920x1080 resolution is a "modest" improvement over 720x480. Do the math -- it's more than twice the pixels. If you want to make this claim, drop your computer monitor's resoultion down... yeah, I didn't think so.
Any movies or TV shows you buy from iTunes are DRM-ridden. Get used to DRM on movies. If CDs had actual DRM, then we would have never seen iTunes Plus.
The point isn't Blu-ray looking better on a 15-inch screen. The point is being able to play a BD movie on yet another device. As some poster said, I don't want to have to buy a BD to play on my HDTV and a DVD to play on my computer. (If you have a BD and want to rip like you would a DVD, one word: Netflix)
The licensing problems were because multiple companies owned the copyrights. Yes, this probably should've been addressed with the birth of DVD, but it wasn't.
HD DVD is dead. I don't care what advantages it had nor the advantages of Betamax. Sony was smart and put BD in the PlayStation3. Blu-ray won. After Betamax and MiniDisc, they deserved a win.
OK, enough of my fact-correcting and preaching. I'm just glad that another wall was knocked down so at the very least Apple will have to come up with a new excuse for not adding support. If Sony and Dell can make laptops with BD-ROM drives for about $800, Apple can add a BTO option to ANY computer and build in support in Snow Leopard.
First of all, business. I posted a link to this like 24 hours ago. What does it take to get credit? But I digress. Too many points to hit.
Optical media are about as dead as the NFL (or EPL or La Liga for you Europeans). I pray that the people claiming optical media are dead are literally children. I buy some software online and maybe a few TV shows. But where does the vast majority come from? Uh, optical media. iLife '09, iWork '09, Mac OS X -- guess what? None of them are available for download! Basically, if you think optical discs are dead, you're just f#@%ing stupid.
Blu-ray is not dead. In fact, it was one of the few sectors that saw growth this holiday season in the US. The USA Today story I read said it was growing faster than DVD was at this point in their life cycles. If you don't think Blu-ray Disc players and movies are worth it yet, HOLY CRAP DON'T BUY ONE. How long was it until EVERYBODY you knew had a DVD player? One of the best things about the emergence of Blu-ray is the player makes your old DVDs look better -- and still plays them. None of those stupid DVD/VHS combos, no need to ditch a single DVD in your collection. The players have been dropping like crazy and the TV shows/movies have been dropping a bit as well. Go look at Smallville Season 6 at Amazon. It's about $35 on BD. You still have to shop around so places like Circuit City don't rip you off with $35 movies and $80 TV series.
I pity the fools who think 1920x1080 resolution is a "modest" improvement over 720x480. Do the math -- it's more than twice the pixels. If you want to make this claim, drop your computer monitor's resoultion down... yeah, I didn't think so.
Any movies or TV shows you buy from iTunes are DRM-ridden. Get used to DRM on movies. If CDs had actual DRM, then we would have never seen iTunes Plus.
The point isn't Blu-ray looking better on a 15-inch screen. The point is being able to play a BD movie on yet another device. As some poster said, I don't want to have to buy a BD to play on my HDTV and a DVD to play on my computer. (If you have a BD and want to rip like you would a DVD, one word: Netflix)
The licensing problems were because multiple companies owned the copyrights. Yes, this probably should've been addressed with the birth of DVD, but it wasn't.
HD DVD is dead. I don't care what advantages it had nor the advantages of Betamax. Sony was smart and put BD in the PlayStation3. Blu-ray won. After Betamax and MiniDisc, they deserved a win.
OK, enough of my fact-correcting and preaching. I'm just glad that another wall was knocked down so at the very least Apple will have to come up with a new excuse for not adding support. If Sony and Dell can make laptops with BD-ROM drives for about $800, Apple can add a BTO option to ANY computer and build in support in Snow Leopard.
Wrong.. There was 9 and all 9 get the same royalties until they added new members.. The patents here have no weight seeing the rights where a group thing not a one company thing..
The "Blu-ray Disc Founder group" was started in May 2002 by nine leading electronic companies: Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung. On February 19, 2002 the companies announced that they were the "Founders" (not one company like you say) of the Blu-ray Disc and later changed their name to the "Blu-ray Disc Association" on May 18, 2004 to allow more companies to join their development. Some examples of companies that signed in include Apple, TDK, Dell, Hewlett Packard, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. and Universal Music Group. As of December 2007, there are more than 250 members and supporters of the Association.
It is all in black and white.. It was a group not one company..
The only Blu-ray movie I have is of Serenity... and I have the HD DVD of it, too.
haha good taste my man. One of my favorite movies by far
haha good taste my man. One of my favorite movies by far
Good flick indeed. The Firefly TV show sold like crazy once the DVD was out, think it even broke a record in DVD sales. I learned about it by IMDB-ing the Terminator show and Summer Glau's in both. I'm also pissed that Fox has given that show (Terminator) the death sentence by moving it to friday night... Season one on BluRay is sweet though.
Cloverfield is also pretty intense on BluRay although the interlaced mode (was shot with handheld cameras that can't do progressive) is ugly when there's lots of motion.
I'm all for new Ultradrives (i.e. better than Superdrive) in Macs so you can play BDs as well. Burning BDs could be a pro feature. I suppose blank BD discs are expensive as hell and take ages to burn, hard drives are just the better deal.