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Blu-ray Licensing to Get Easier and Cheaper
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All these people saying that Blu-ray is dead and that internet-streaming is the future - I hate to alarm you, but there's a big bad world outside of these forums in which people who like to watch quality video don't have computers in their living rooms. Many don't have broadband, and some of them, believe it or nor, don't even own computers 
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I'm ready to see bluray drives in macs. This has been a long time waiting for this. I hate that the this has been such a difficult hurdle for so long.
I'm ready to see bluray drives in macs. This has been a long time waiting for this. I hate that the this has been such a difficult hurdle for so long.
Nice post, i agree with absolutely everything you say (apart from you can download iWork 09)
You might never be buying a BD player then!!!
I live in the UK and around 70% of my BD library (about 200 movies) is imported from the US because so many are region free.
Here's a list for you http://bluray.liesinc.net/
Fox are the only studio coding all their discs, but they even have started becoming more relaxed.
What did you want to be cheap? Players? Their pretty cheap now and this whole licensing article is about how the BDA are trying to make discs cheaper. Its a win-win situation i think...
I still can't see this ever happening.
Apple's excuse over licensing issues was weak at best. It's a simple fact that Apple are all about iTunes and selling HD movies through this format. Introducing a BR drive would only hurt their sales.
Personally though, I couldn't care about a BR drive in my laptop. I'd rather play on a dedicated player hooked up to my screen, which is how it should be for HD anyway
Apple's excuse over licensing issues was weak at best. It's a simple fact that Apple are all about iTunes and selling HD movies through this format. Introducing a BR drive would only hurt their sales.
Personally though, I couldn't care about a BR drive in my laptop. I'd rather play on a dedicated player hooked up to my screen, which is how it should be for HD anyway
I really don't agree with the camp that claim adding a play BR drive is such a strong conflict to Apple's business model.
In my opinion the people purchasing video content on iTunes will continue to do so because of the convenience in it. Also delivering computers that are less equipped than the competition might be good for iTunes. However iTunes is not Apple's big earner. Selling computers is where they make the real profits and therefore they need to keep up with the competition.
Also people seem to neglect the fact that adding a BR drive is not only about playing movies. It allows Apple to deliver programs like FCP in one disc, which provide significant savings to them. Also their professional users will soon demand it. Photographers shooting 15GB of pictures in 6 months would sure appreciate being able to make larger back-ups and using fewer discs.
It might not fit into your workflow, but it seems pretty ignorant and pretentious to downplay the need for BD drives in Macs. There are lot of users with workflows that are very different that yours, who need the benefits of BR drives on their Macs.
In my opinion the people purchasing video content on iTunes will continue to do so because of the convenience in it. Also delivering computers that are less equipped than the competition might be good for iTunes. However iTunes is not Apple's big earner. Selling computers is where they make the real profits and therefore they need to keep up with the competition.
Also people seem to neglect the fact that adding a BR drive is not only about playing movies. It allows Apple to deliver programs like FCP in one disc, which provide significant savings to them. Also their professional users will soon demand it. Photographers shooting 15GB of pictures in 6 months would sure appreciate being able to make larger back-ups and using fewer discs.
It might not fit into your workflow, but it seems pretty ignorant and pretentious to downplay the need for BD drives in Macs. There are lot of users with workflows that are very different that yours, who need the benefits of BR drives on their Macs.
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
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.
Just as I was losing all hope of finding sensible posts amongst the misinformation that makes up this forum topic, you come along like a bright ray of light.
The only thing I would add is mosx hasn't even posted how the current digital download offerings from the likes of iTunes store pale into insignificance bit-rate wise compared with Blu-Ray and how current internet speeds to the home prohibit support of mass downloads of films encoded at 40Mbps or higher i.e attempting to match the quality offered by the physical disks... nor will they in the near future.
mosx has posted the most accurate, detailed and well explained post, regarding the not so immediate death of Blu-Ray, I have ever seen on this or pretty much any forum. This post should be stickied and should be dugg as far as I am concerned!
Its not Virgin, and last month i downloaded 450GB of data (legally) so if theres a fair usage policy then they obviously dont care about it. I agree most people are stuck with awful copper wire 2MB max internet connections, and in busy areas that can be reduced to sometimes less than 1MB, but as soon as fibre optic cabling is introduced which is happening at the moment (and the reason for my internet speeds) then we'll all get much faster uncapped internet, there wont be need for a fair usage policy because there will be more than enough speed to go around, look at the case of South Korea for example, where they've had fibre optic speeds for nearly a decade now, we're well behind over here.
HD DVD should be the standard, especially since blu-ray is making no attempt whatsoever to lower its prices, other than in the article we've seen here, and any monopolily like that deserves to fail. As long as they keep their prices high, people will pirate their movies, not everyone other than people in a few first world countries can afford so much to watch a high quality movie.
You might want to reconsider this.
Really you might want to reconsider that statement, there are to many variables to make such a blanket statement. For one thing viewing distance is a big factor. Considering that Apple has even higher density displays for desktop usage, as do other manufactures, you point gets blown out of the water by the fact that people buy such displays because they can see the difference and can leverage the higher density displays in their work.
It is one thing to talk about usable resolution, on a screen of a given size, when you are planted on a couch 10-15 feet away. It is another thing to apply those same limits to a screen used in conjunction with a computer or in a much smaller room.
In anyevent one just needs to walk into a showroom and look at HDTVs side by side to see the advantages that 1080P brings to the picture.
Really you might want to reconsider that statement, there are to many variables to make such a blanket statement. For one thing viewing distance is a big factor. Considering that Apple has even higher density displays for desktop usage, as do other manufactures, you point gets blown out of the water by the fact that people buy such displays because they can see the difference and can leverage the higher density displays in their work.
It is one thing to talk about usable resolution, on a screen of a given size, when you are planted on a couch 10-15 feet away. It is another thing to apply those same limits to a screen used in conjunction with a computer or in a much smaller room.
In anyevent one just needs to walk into a showroom and look at HDTVs side by side to see the advantages that 1080P brings to the picture.
Why would they lower their prices now they have their monopoly after bribing the film studios? I hope bluray fails.
BluRay WILL fail....in about 6 years when it is over shadowed by non-mechanical data media. BluRay is the last gasp of optical digital media for mass consumption.
One of the projector manufacturers, sorry cannot remember the name, ran an event for av enthusiasts. They were shown films using 720P and 1080P and only 30% of the audience could tell which was which. And this is people who are considered experts and were looking for differences.
Joe sixpack couldn't tell the difference and more importantly wouldn't care less. 1080P may be slightly better than 720P in absolute terms but in practice is just marketing one-upmanship.
Dude, what are you on about! HD-DVD is dead and buried (for over a year now). The only reason it was cheap was because Toshiba were desperately trying to keep the format alive with Microsoft helping only to keep the format war alive.
BD players have dropped massively since this time last year, you can now get players for £150 and prices are still going down.
The whole point of this single license IS TO MAKE THINGS CHEAPER!!!!
You won't be buying a Mac for about six years, then.
Yeah, because ever since they haven't had to lower prices to compete with anything, no one is buying their overpriced crap.
They HAVE to come up with one license to lower prices at all.
Windows 3.1. How much did it cost? $99.
Windows Vista Ultimate. How much does it cost? $339.
You can charge whatever you want when people HAVE to buy your crap for lack of an alternative.
Seen the price of Office? The fuller suites are around $500 because people HAVE to have it for business.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote in your post except this bit. To me personally, the VHS>DVD move was like going from candles to lightbulbs. DVD>Blu-ray is good, but more like going from lightbulbs to fluorescent bulbs - a definite improvement, but not a total change in the way we do things and our expectations.
Absolutely, VHS was rubbish. The difference to DVD was noticeable to the whole population which is why it took off once it reached a mainstream price.
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?
So, the licensing playing field has changed so I personally expect to see Apple rolling out a Blu Ray Drive option probably in the next but one revisions of their desktop.
Maybe a major iMac revision in the 1st-2nd quarter 2010 incorporating a Core i7 and Blu Ray option.
Maybe a major iMac revision in the 1st-2nd quarter 2010 incorporating a Core i7 and Blu Ray option.
I am with you, i can wait, need a new imac 24" but i wont buy until blu-ray is fully integrated.
nor will i upgrade my MBP till i get able to read discs for playback.
apple used to be a tech leader, now it is only some of the time unless it messes with their itunes movie store.
fun fun fun
So be it if I never buy BD. I want ALL discs to be playable.
There are no cheap $99 BD players with BD-Live and so on.
Thats against European business competition laws so it wont happen here, some companies are currently doing it (Such as Orange and BT) but they got hit with big fines so we're seeing it less and less know. Guess its only going to stick in the US where you have IT comms lobbyists laughing in the face of your 'democracy'. My broadband is 52MB and its got no bandwidth usage limit and it costs me in dollars about $30 per month, and so thats why i think digital media is the future. Its also got no bottlenecks on torrent ports which rules
What are you talking about ??
Of course they can restrict their service if they want to - can you point me to the European business competition laws that state otherwise - in fact what's this got to do with competition ?
If you are on 52MB broadband then I assume its Virgin - in which case you should read the fair usage element of the Acceptable Use Policy - I quote:
7.3. In addition to the above, Users' provision of IPS may not adversely affect any other users of our network (including telephony and internet services). Further, Users may not include within and/or distribute via an IPS any content without the express consent of the owner of all relevant rights in such content (including but not limited to intellectual property rights). We reserve the right to monitor network traffic and to take appropriate action as required, including the right to restrict any IPS. An example of such adverse usage could be the consumption of a high proportion of the available upload bandwidth over a significant period of time. We will not offer any technical support for the provision of IPS.
Looks like they can take away your service if they feel it's being abused - what's not clear is what the level of usage needs to be ?
Having been lurking here since purchasing the iPhone, I come to realize many seem to think Apple stiffles their customers by lmiting the hardware and software they can se.
I have a Dell XPS with a Bluray player and HDMI. Simply awesome.
I was an HD-DVD fan and was hoping they would have succeeded but they didn't so moved to Blu-ray.
Picture quality is very noticable. The animated movies really show the difference. black Knight whew, unreal on blu-ray compared to DVD.
Sorry Steve Jobs doesn't think you need blu-ray in your computers but while you wait for Apple to allow you to have player built in I will surely have been and will be enjoying my blu-ray laptop
I have a Dell XPS with a Bluray player and HDMI. Simply awesome.
I was an HD-DVD fan and was hoping they would have succeeded but they didn't so moved to Blu-ray.
Picture quality is very noticable. The animated movies really show the difference. black Knight whew, unreal on blu-ray compared to DVD.
Sorry Steve Jobs doesn't think you need blu-ray in your computers but while you wait for Apple to allow you to have player built in I will surely have been and will be enjoying my blu-ray laptop