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Does apple at all support blu-ray?

The answer is yes. I believe they are on the board or something or other... mostly they don't have Blu-Ray in their systems yet because last I heard it was a pain in the rear to get licenses for all the various things. I have heard more recently though that that problem may be alleviated.
 
SilentPanda said:
The answer is yes. I believe they are on the board or something or other... mostly they don't have Blu-Ray in their systems yet because last I heard it was a pain in the rear to get licenses for all the various things. I have heard more recently though that that problem may be alleviated.
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Rumors ... rumors.
Apple may support BR but we can't play a BR disc in our fancy machines.
 
Just my opinion, but I think there is a possibility Apple may skip BluRay.

I was reading an article the other, some fellow who's involved with BluRay said that it had a life expectancy of 5 years, article was from September 2008 I believe. He listed as things that will limit it's life span; high capacity high speed laptop HDD's, the phenomenal growth of digital downloads, and holographic disc technology on the horizon ( 500 GB discs already, potential for 1 TB, 😱 ).

What he didn't reference, but I read in another article, is that uptake of content on BluRay discs has been slow. A lot of the BluRay players sold in the US have come in the form of a PS3, and the low number of titles sold per player suggest PS3 buyers mostly aren't utilizing the BluRay.

On an anecdotal note, I have a friend who works in a DC for a very well known international discount chain, ( Wally World ), who told me they're scaling back their BluRay purchasing due to slow sales. What is selling well is SD DVD's with included digital copies.

I'll look around and see if I can find the links to the articles.

Looks like BluRay may be an expensive, passing fad.
 
dsnort said:
Just my opinion, but I think there is a possibility Apple may skip BluRay.

I was reading an article the other, some fellow who's involved with BluRay said that it had a life expectancy of 5 years, article was from September 2008 I believe. He listed as things that will limit it's life span; high capacity high speed laptop HDD's, the phenomenal growth of digital downloads, and holographic disc technology on the horizon ( 500 GB discs already, potential for 1 TB, 😱 ).

What he didn't reference, but I read in another article, is that uptake of content on BluRay discs has been slow. A lot of the BluRay players sold in the US have come in the form of a PS3, and the low number of titles sold per player suggest PS3 buyers mostly aren't utilizing the BluRay.

On an anecdotal note, I have a friend who works in a DC for a very well known international discount chain, ( Wally World ), who told me they're scaling back their BluRay purchasing due to slow sales. What is selling well is SD DVD's with included digital copies.

I'll look around and see if I can find the links to the articles.

Looks like BluRay may be an expensive, passing fad.
Click to expand...

Um, OK.

Blu-ray has doubled its market share since this time last year. I think it's now at 7% (I forget if that's discs or players). That's pretty good for something that is just now getting to really good prices (I have seen $149 refurbs at BestBuy.com; $200 is the norm for entry-level units). Prices for discs have also gone down, with plenty of $10 titles available at sales. This doesn't match DVDs available at $5, but we're talking about a better format.

As far as relying on what Wal-Mart says for how the world works, um, don't. I have never bought a DVD player from Wal-Mart, nor much else in the past decade. I'd much rather go to a place that 1) I don't hate, and 2) sells more eletronic equipment. I just bought a new BD player at Best Buy and don't have to pay interest for 18 months plus got it $50 off.

As far as this holographic disc, it's all rumor and speculation at this point. Blu-ray also has 200 GB discs in the works, but they aren't in mass production yet. To go with that, these "high-speed" laptop HDDs aren't HDDs. They're SSDs, and they're still WAY more expensive per GB. A 500 GB HDD is about $100. 375 GB worth of BDs are $80. So the discs are about a wash financially, but the SSDs are way more expensive.

Once $99 BD players hit stores this holiday season, watch the adoption rate jump even more. The format isn't the extreme jump that DVD was, so you'd think it would be going slower. But from everything I've read, it's not. DVDs have pretty much peaked, so manufacturers are going to start really pushing BDs with price and features to get mo' money.
 
The problem from the studies I've read, is that if you exclude PS3, or even reduce the number of them 50%, Bluray uptake over the last 6 months is slowing. One of the problems is the slow incursion of itunes, netflix, etc. I'm no industry expert (did fix an elevator at a Holiday Inn though, if that counts) but Bluray keeps fighting from more and more varied sources every year (almost seems like every three months a new HD content delivery system is popping up). The Blu-ray vs. digital content delivery is going to be fascinating to watch.

In a sense, this is good, however. I've never liked the whole "here's the format monopoly for the next ten years, like it or not" paradigm the studios hoist upon us. A little competition is good.
 
By the way, the reason studies are starting to put less weight in the PS3 column is due to the limited purchase power that consumer market polls are finding the typical PS3 buyer wields.
 
Since I'm HD crazy I guess I'll pitch in here too.

Blu-ray support in Macs will come at some point but at the present time, the decoding power is a problem. When Apple officially offloads decoding to the GPU it will be practical but for the moment, I can't get any of my Macs to play a 1080p stream ripped from an HD DVD for instance without stuttering badly.

Apple TV HD downloads are pretty good quality and the future is likely to be downloads at least for renting. I still like discs for purchasing though and that is likely to be true for others. I'm less worried about playing the full resolution movie on my laptop for instance. To really appreciate HD you need a big screen. BDs need to come with a pre-ripped copy I can carry around on my iPod or on my laptop and I'll save the BD itself for my 100" screen.

At this moment in time I have finally got into BD because the players are cheap enough and cheaper than the PS3 which isn't the best way to play BD. Also, the region coding isn't proving such an issue since the studios that previously supported HD DVD are also releasing their BDs region free. Studios that stick to region coding will get less of my custom but so be it.

BDs will be around for a while yet and will replace DVDs once the players are dirt cheap (which they pretty much are already).
 
Michael CM1 said:
Um, OK.
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S'okay, said it was just my opinion

Michael CM1 said:
Blu-ray has doubled its market share since this time last year. I think it's now at 7% (I forget if that's discs or players).
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Pretty sure that's players, average of 3 titles owned per player, waaaaayyyy behind DVD uptake at the same point in life cycle.

http://www.cepro.com/article/blu_ray_adoption_wont_happen_until_2009_research_finds/

"The interest in upgrading to high-def players is only mild, and Blu-ray ownership won’t hit 25 percent of US households until the end of 2011, as reported by Reuters/Hollywood Reporter."

"Disc ownership is down among Blu-ray owners compared to first-time DVD owners, who owned nearly 30 titles at the same point in the adoption curve, according to the report. Blu-ray households own an average of three titles a piece."

"According to recent research from Interpret, LLC, Blu-ray awareness has hit 60 percent, but hardware penetration is still low. The Reuters report argues that Sony’s PlayStation 3, which has an embedded Blu-ray drive, isn’t doing the job."

"Plus, since the vast majority of Blu-ray players are in homes because Sony has embedded them into the PlayStation 3 video game consoles, many consumers don’t seem to care that they even have a Blu-ray player."


Michael CM1 said:
As far as relying on what Wal-Mart says for how the world works, um, don't. I have never bought a DVD player from Wal-Mart, nor much else in the past decade. I'd much rather go to a place that 1) I don't hate, and 2) sells more eletronic equipment. I just bought a new BD player at Best Buy and don't have to pay interest for 18 months plus got it $50 off.
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I don't buy electronics from Wal Mart either, but they sell a ton of movies. More than just about anyone.

Michael CM1 said:
As far as this holographic disc, it's all rumor and speculation at this point.
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Interesting article for you, you may have to register to read it, but it's free. (Hint, it's already here!)

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21834/

Michael CM1 said:
To go with that, these "high-speed" laptop HDDs aren't HDDs. They're SSDs, and they're still WAY more expensive per GB. A 500 GB HDD is about $100. 375 GB worth of BDs are $80. So the discs are about a wash financially, but the SSDs are way more expensive.
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I was actually thinking of the 500GB 7200 RPM models. Just a few year ago, 60 GB was a good size for a laptop. Also, what do think would be easier to carry around, a HDD, or 375 GB worth of BRD's in Jewel cases?
 
Let's face it. A large problem now that is growing is portability. People don't want to have one disc tied to one player in their home. They want it on their ipod, their DVD screen in their car, up at their cabin, and on their computer. Blu-ray, with it's standard copy protection and BD+, fights that tooth and nail. And I think another small reason I'm hearing more and more in these economic times is that alot of people I talk to say that one little sentence that the studios are going to hear more and more of - "I already own it on DVD. I'm not buying it AGAIN". I think that's a big roadblock that only a new, fresh technology that takes advantage of portability will overcome. Like, say, the apple product ecosystem perhaps.

On another note, the DRM and licensing "bag of hurt" isn't just the licensing. In order to allow blu-ray playback there are a host of protection measures that are required by the BR consortium (mafia) to enable playback on an operating system platform. This is what Steve Jobs was referring to in his comment, not paperwork. It's one of the reasons that Vista was bloated and required graphical workstation specs just to run the basic version. I've got a link somewhere around here that was expose written by a New Zealand professor where he detailed the main reasons Vista turned out to be such a turd on the then current hardware that was available. DRM was cited over and over in this document. It was a really good read. I'll see if I can dig it up.
 
Rich1963 said:
"I already own it on DVD. I'm not buying it AGAIN". I think that's a big roadblock that only a new, fresh technology that takes advantage of portability will overcome. Like, say, the apple product ecosystem perhaps.
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That's another point. I already own a host of DVD titles, most of which I have converted to a "portable" form. It's not just a money matter, the SD content I already own...is...very good, perfectly watchable. I've seen a lot of HD stuff, and it looks nice, but after a few minutes the novelty wears off and what you're left with is, is the content good or bad. HD doesn't make a bad movie good, and SD doesn't make a good movie bad.

There's an old saying in engineering about not letting the best solution be the enemy of good enough. IMO, we may have reached a point of diminishing returns. HD is best, but SD is good enough.
 
dsnort, I'm not gonna copy that whole thing, but this is in part for you:

For the 7200rpm drives, where are those at? Seriously, I'd love to see one because I can feel the slowness of my 5400 drive.

On your point of carrying around movies vs. a hard drive, I totally concur that the movies on a disk are much more portable. That's why I wish EVERY movie contained a digital copy or we were allowed to rip without needing HandBrake. The problem is how much space even SD movies take, let alone HD movies. This is a similar problem to owning nothing but MP3s a few years ago when "OOH, a 100GB hard disk!" was actually said. Me, I like the full bomb S%#@ of Blu-ray on an HDTV with a decent sound system.

I think streaming has more of a future than downloads, but I think both are great for rental purposes. If you want to watch a movie once, Netflix's streaming service is AWESOME (if the movie is available). Their "HD" quality is more like DVD quality, but it's still good enough for one viewing. I used to rent some movies from iTunes, but I have stopped doing that after finding out how much cheaper Netflix is.

Probably shouldn't have used "rumor and speculation" about holographic discs, but I can tell you that I have never seen nor heard of one before you mentioned it. I'm gonna read that article later on tonight. But if studios don't back it, and I don't think another format war is planned, don't count on it. Format awesomeness means little if nobody supports it. MiniDisc was pretty neat in its time, but nobody aside from Sony supported it.

I think digital services, downloads and streaming, will stay with us forever. But I just don't think they'll become a primary purchase format. ISPs will start to cap connections if people go nuts downloading HD content, and BDs have superior audio and video to any downloadable format.
 
Seriously... Besides back up purposes, what's the point of buying into a "computer" to watch movies?? Someone please enlighten me.

Isn't somewhat counter productive and waste full (in some respects) to watch movies on a machine, that's built for creativity?
 
UltraNEO* said:
Seriously... Besides back up purposes, what's the point of buying into a "computer" to watch movies?? Someone please enlighten me.

Isn't somewhat counter productive and waste full (in some respects) to watch movies on a machine, that's built for creativity?
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Systems like Mac Mini's are extremley popular has media centre systems.

If Apple put a bluray drive in a mac mini, and allowed it to playback commercial blurays, its almost the only device you would need under your TV.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Seriously... Besides back up purposes, what's the point of buying into a "computer" to watch movies?? Someone please enlighten me.

Isn't somewhat counter productive and waste full (in some respects) to watch movies on a machine, that's built for creativity?
Click to expand...

Remove that head from the anus!
It's a good thing to have the latest tech in your system. When I was at university I watched many a DVD on my iMac and PowerBook and I would love to have BR (for backup and film watching) in my current Mac systems. A computer can have more than 1 purpose.
 
dsnort said:
I was actually thinking of the 500GB 7200 RPM models. Just a few year ago, 60 GB was a good size for a laptop. Also, what do think would be easier to carry around, a HDD, or 375 GB worth of BRD's in Jewel cases?
Click to expand...


If you think about it, 375 GB of Blu-Ray discs is only about 8-10 movies. Honestly, I'd rather carry around a disc sleeve with a few movies over a HDD, power supply, and USB/Firewire cable...

And then there's all the time it took to rip and encode the movies. It's convenience (being able to watch the movies in Plex or on any computer you can attach the HDD to) vs time expenditure (ripping/encoding the movies).

I think it evens out in the end. And just in terms of the bandwidth situation in this country, I think we're a little ways from 100% digital movie distribution. Take iTunes for example. The "HD" movies they offer just barely live up to the title. In fact, they look only slightly better than a good upconverting DVD player.

So even if Blu-Ray is replaced by another technology in a few years, there is still going to be physical media until the network infrastructure is heavily updated in this country.

Personally, I'm a fan of ripping my physical media into digital formats. However, I like having the original material for future ripping in case of a HDD crash or changing technology.
 
YES BLU-RAY!!!.... Don't assume.

YES!!! It just requires an external drive. LaCie d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive I don't know why people are so quick to assume that mac doesn't have something or isn't capable. I have had this drive for 2 yrs now and works great and on a 5 yr old powerbook non the less... I remember researching it, waiting for something stable to come out but I remember seeing work-arounds and various solutions back in late '06 early '07.
 
regnoc said:
YES!!! It just requires an external drive. LaCie d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive I don't know why people are so quick to assume that mac doesn't have something or isn't capable. I have had this drive for 2 yrs now and works great and on a 5 yr old powerbook non the less... I remember researching it, waiting for something stable to come out but I remember seeing work-arounds and various solutions back in late '06 early '07.
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I have one connected to my my mac as well, and it's great for burning stuff, but you still can't play a blu-ray unless you defeat the copy protection, which you can only do from Windows. Full support includes play back of blu-ray content as far as I'm concerned. Time to put a Band Aid on that "bag of hurt", we shouldn't have to resort to using Windows to play a simple movie.
 
I'm hoping they remove optical drives from the notebook ranges completely 🙂 They are a serious hinderence to design, as they take up so much space. Open your Macbook's and just have a look. Apple could do so much more if it just let you buy external optical drives. Like put in 6 extra USB/Firewire ports 🙂

The things are relics. Downloads and flash drives are the future.
 
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