What would iTunes do with a Blu-Ray disc anyway? Wouldn't Blu-Ray support being added to DVD Player (which would then need to be renamed, I guess) make more sense?
Unless DVD Player is being merged into iTunes. I don't see any new DVD Player features or refinements listed for SL, so I guess it's always possible that in the final release, once iTunes 9 has been released, DVD Player will be discontinued.
I hope not though.
Exactly. This rumor sounds highly unlikely to me due to the details involved. Since when does iTunes have ANYTHING to do with ANY disc media? DVDs are played by a DVD player, not by iTunes. The ONLY way you'll be able to play them in any form in iTunes is to use something like Handbrake to encode them into MP4 (M4V). Furthermore, why would Apple shoot themselves in the foot by offering Blu-Ray playback through iTunes when the entire goal of iTunes is to get you to buy movies, tv shows and music from the iTunes store. Buying Blu-Ray Discs is completely counter-productive to the goal of iTunes. I might believe that an updated DVD player (or more likely a new BD Player program) might be offered with Snow Leopard simply do to user demand and the fact Apple is look pretty darn SAD in mid-2009 by not offering any BD support when it's now the defacto standard for HD video.
iTunes, thus far, has not been able to offer squat for purchasable HD movies and having watched with interest for anything good popping up and finding very little, I'd say there's at least a chance they realize that Hollywood has little to no interest in letting them compete with Blu-Ray. The studios probably figure it'd just lead to more consumer confusion at this point (good riddance HD-DVD) and while some of us would probably love the option (AppleTV can only handle 720P and some of us don't WANT another disc format with irritating long un-skippable FBI warnings, advertisements galore for other movies, slow startup times and retarded menu systems that waste your time when all you want to do is start the darn movie already. It's getting simpler to rip BD movies and re-encode into something useful that can be stored on a hard drive, but it's still mostly a PITA.
Something that might be useful to consumers would be an updated Mac Mini that can handle 1080P, includes a Blu-Ray drive, HDMI output and having Front Row updated to handle AppleTV style rentals (you cannot rent most HD movies from iTunes...only the ones you can buy which aren't many, while AppleTV has several hundred, if not thousands to pick from, but only to rent, which sucks. Anything you can rent on AppleTV, you should be able to buy and for less than Blu-Ray. Otherwise, it's not economical.) But a Mac Mini with a built-in Blu-Ray drive would solve part of the problem (you could at least play your BD movies in full HD, even if you cannot buy many from iTunes; the player could then automatically (or nearly so; I'm sure a code would be involved) download an SD version for your library and iPod/iPhone/Mobile playback while you watch your movie.
While all that would be useful, again it would cut into Apple's iTunes store sales/rentals, so it's hard to imagine Apple actually doing any of it. They do claim they make very little from software, though, so a BD/iTunes/Mobile option would at least be a bit of an incentive to buy the updated AppleTV/Mini thing and maybe another iPod/Touch too. That I could believe would be an incentive for them to do it. They like hardware sales.
The only problem I see is that the current Mini costs too much as an AppleTV. Devices like the Popcorn Hour A-110 are more in-line with current AppleTV prices, not Mac Mini prices. Still, an updated AppleTV with a hardware decoding chip to offload the CPU and a BD drive could be done for under $500 (maybe even $299 just like the current model given its aging overpriced status). I own two AppleTV units and I'd still buy one if it could handle full 1080P and had a Blu-Ray drive and cost less than $500. I'd just move one of the old AppleTV units to another secondary room that has a smaller TV and put the new one in the main home theater room.
You are missing the point here. If you buy music off of iTunes the quality is pretty bad and the only purpose of SACD's DVD-A and BD-A is to supply audio that is a LOT better then cd sound quality is is for audiophiles that have high end equipment and want to hear better sound quality something you cannot do with a computer or downloaded files.
Actually, 256kbit variable bit-rate AAC is pretty darn GOOD sound quality (indistinguishable from the source material in ALL double blind testing). I used to know one of the guys that helped invent AAC and his scientific testing data was very clear. I'm sure you THINK otherwise, but I'd bet money you couldn't tell any differences better than pure chance in a series of double blind tests. Really, that's money in the bank. It's been proven time and time again that so-called audiophiles often fool themselves into thinking they're hearing things that aren't there. Redbook CD is already well beyond the capability of human hearing in frequency response and therefore higher sampling rates are useless (you cannot hear those frequencies above 20kHz PERIOD) and unless you are playing music at volume levels that would cause your hearing to be damaged, it's unlikely you'll hear (let alone be able to record in most environments) more than 90dB of dynamic range to begin with. More than 2-channels of playback can be handy, but most recordings are not made in multi-channel and most pop recordings that are tend to sound gimmicky (ping-pong). The real reason most SACD recordings sound so good is because actual care was taken in the master recording process for those albums, which is simply not true of many mainstream recordings. Suffice to say, there are some truly high-end recordings available on the lowly compact disc (I have many Japanese Anime Orchestral soundtracks that would make most people's jaws drop).
You will now tell me how you most certain CAN hear those differences and they are HUGE and so on, but again, I state without any doubt in my mind that you would fail a proper double blind test because EVERYONE before you has failed. Entire companies exist to cater to the imagination and musings of audiophiles. They used to sell green marker pens for obscene prices (they were just regular markers, BTW) and audiophiles gushed over how much better CDs sounded when their edges were painted green. There was no scientific basis or reasoning to such a thing, but snake-oil knows no bounds.
There IS a good reason to RECORD with more than 16-bits, however and that reason is headroom. The last thing you want when recording live music is to have clipping due to a headroom issue. 24-bits gives insane amounts of headroom and pretty much ensures you will never get clipping due to the input side of things not having enough headroom to accommodate even the poorest of soundboard settings. Some say the higher frequency sampling rates are useful to avoid brick wall filtering, but oversampling was invented over 25 years ago to achieve the same thing. It's simply unnecessary, but the industry knows that it sounds good on paper to audiophiles and they'll do whatever it takes to separate them from their money. Hence the ridiculous overkill of SACD (which is a failure everywhere except for classical music where most audiophiles live and breathe).
Before you accuse me of being deaf, know that I have ribbon speakers that use the same ribbons as $50,000 Genesis II speakers with a custom active crossover and over 500 watts per channel total into 4ohms. I got them when my hearing was still 'perfect' with full response. I've heard all kinds of audiophile equipment and followed the "high-end" rags for years. It was fun to get excited about junk, but it was all just fantasy (well speakers are very real, at least and where people should be putting most of their money). Blind testing proves all. I find I'm much happier listening to MUSIC instead of RECORDINGS these days.
