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Epsilon88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
327
0
Hi guys, I've been confused about something. Steve Jobs has repeatedly refused to put Bluray into Macs, saying that downloading movies is the future. I just bought a Bluray player and about 10 Bluray discs. What I'm wondering is, is Jobs right? Are Blurays only a temporary phenomenon, or have I made a sound investment by buying a Bluray player?
 
No. Bluray is the new standard DVD. It'll be around for quite some time. I think the downloading deal is quite cumbersome for many. The apple tv is a step towards making it easier, but that and downloads in general aren't going to take over bluray, yet.

Despite popular belief, steve jobs is not the be all, end all and doesn't quite have the ability to predict the future any more than anyone else.
 
That's good to know. Personally I find Bluray to be amazing, and it's nice to physically own a movie.
 
Until bandwidth limits and speeds are raised immensely physical media will still be around. Sure people want to download everything but the quality is still not as good as Bluray.
 
Until bandwidth limits and speeds are raised immensely physical media will still be around. Sure people want to download everything but the quality is still not as good as Bluray.

And I also feel that there's some value in actually owning a physical object. Even if we did have the capacity to do everything online, I'd still want to own the disc.
 
I still buy physical CD's mainly for the sound quality and the ability to have a hard copy.

Cal me old fashioned but I like browsing the shelves looking for music.
 
Good question ... I cannot help but think of Beta VCRs when I think of BluRay

somehow I just think companies like NetFlix will come out on top of BluRay
 
Honestly, I don't see Blu's going by the wayside for at least another 3 years. I rent movies from RedBox and watch them. If I really "love" the movie, I buy it on Blu. If there is a digital copy included in the Blu package I'm much more likely to buy.

Until storage is much cheaper, I will rent movies at Redbox, unless I REALLY like them. Blu's come on a 50GB disc, you'd be VERY hard pressed to have any volume of movies in your iTunes/HD if you wanted the quality of Blu-ray. "Unfortunately" I have a home theater and can appreciate good quality.

I will say, as soon at the MBp's and iMacs get a Blu drive, I will buy.
 
Until bandwidth limits and speeds are raised immensely physical media will still be around. Sure people want to download everything but the quality is still not as good as Bluray.

This is definitally true, and for most places this won't be happening very quickly.
 
I still buy physical CD's mainly for the sound quality and the ability to have a hard copy.

Cal me old fashioned but I like browsing the shelves looking for music.

Same! I don't understand why the Mac can't even have an "option" for Bluray, even an overpriced option.
 
I think Steve Jobs is correct when he says that downloading movies is the future. Key word is future though. Right now what you are able to download through itunes simply does not compare to the quality that blu-ray has to offer.

I also think the main reason that we dont see blu-ray offered on macs is simply because Apple wants you to buy movies from them.

Plus, as someone else has pointed out at 50gigs per movie, storing a blu-ray film digitally just is not practical.

I can see in another ten years where prices for storage will be cheap enough that you could have a whole library of digital blu-ray movies, but until than Ill keep my blu-ray player.
 
The answer is a definitely NO!!

Even Steve Jobs has to admit that due to the current state of broadband in the USA with its relatively slow download speeds and monthly download capacity limits, downloaded and streaming movies are not yet completely viable here. A device like the Apple TV, Roku box and Google TV makes more sense in countries where very high-speed broadband (over 25 megabits/second download speeds) is widely available such as Japan, South Korea and France.
 
Movie downloads/streams are still taking their first steps. The biggest issues are slow and capped internet connections. A good quality BR can be 50Mb/s. Only very few people have +50Mb/s broadband. Another issue is that I don't know any legal services that offer BR quality downloads/streams, mainly because of the size.

Downloading is popular but BR still has its market. You aren't going to download anything with capped 2Mb/s connection
 
4k is the next bluray. Physical media will be around for a long time.

4K is a resolution, not a media. I can't see it being a consumer standard for a very long time, especially when you consider that most digital scanning of film is done at 2K. There's simply no point having that kind of resolution if you're watching it on a TV that will fit in a normal sized room.
 
I still buy physical CD's mainly for the sound quality and the ability to have a hard copy.

Cal me old fashioned but I like browsing the shelves looking for music.

I am extremely particular about the quality of my sound playback.
It's unfortunate that the sound qualiy is ignored in the portable players.
What's a cda file, on average 40 to 50 Meg. Peanuts in today's storage capabilities. The disservice is pushing, this device stores 1 bazillion songs ignoring quality.

Blu-ray when produced with high quality is fantastic. The uncompressed audio is a treat to my system.

Blu ray dead, hardly. In the next year I am hoping r/w blu rays are half the price than today. 40gig storage for a couple of bucks, great way to back up those bazillion songs
 
Until bandwidth limits and speeds are raised immensely physical media will still be around. Sure people want to download everything but the quality is still not as good as Bluray.

I agree, but still, broadband really has a lot of room to improve given the amount of data that's moved around. Even if the whole country had a nice DSL line, it would still take an hour to get a Bluray movie. Obama needs to have T3's installed on all taxpaying homes. :D
 
Hi guys, I've been confused about something. Steve Jobs has repeatedly refused to put Bluray into Macs, saying that downloading movies is the future. I just bought a Bluray player and about 10 Bluray discs. What I'm wondering is, is Jobs right? Are Blurays only a temporary phenomenon, or have I made a sound investment by buying a Bluray player?

What would you say if you owned an online store that sells digital downloads?

We won't ever see a BluRay drive in a Mac. In fact, we will soon see whole generations of Macs that won't even have a DVD drive anymore. Apple will be moving everything to their online services. That's the future Steve Jobs has in mind for you.
 
I agree, but still, broadband really has a lot of room to improve given the amount of data that's moved around. Even if the whole country had a nice DSL line, it would still take an hour to get a Bluray movie. Obama needs to have T3's installed on all taxpaying homes. :D
Obama needs to have T3 lines installed in all non-tax payers. Taxpayers can pay for it on their own.:eek:
 
It is the outrageous DRM Requirements by the license holder that is killing Blue Ray. Very extreme.

Those requirements are particularly bad on the PC. I want to throw my Dell out the window every time Cyberlink informs me that I need to download an update to playback a particular Blu-ray disc (thanks Iron Man 2).

It's very annoying. iTunes Store a side, I don't see Apple implementing a DRM protection scheme throughout OS X (like Microsoft did with Vista and Windows 7) in order to support Blu-ray playback.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

It's bad enough Apple supports HDCP in iTunes/QuickTime on top of FairPlay. FairPlay was enough, IMO.

Oddly enough, if you purchase iTunes content that requires HDCP and you can't play it back --- iTunes support will refund your purchase and send you a form e-mail that blames it on the content providers. :D
 
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