Jobs on HD DVD Burners

[DGFan]

Ahh see this is where innovation and bleeding edge is in the eye of the beholder. I'm talking from purely a technological standpoint. If you look at it from integration and an ease of use standpoint Apple blows everyone else out of the water.

Well it sounds like you're arguing with yourself


The term "tech innovation" which you initially objected to does not only apply to purely low-level tech. I would say that a fancy power brick is tech innovation. Why? Well, it's innovation in a technical product. I mean, it's certainly not flower innovation.

Software innovation is also tech innovation. And that's an area IBM could learn a thing or two about (I write this with the worst piece of garbage email program ever written - Locust Notes - sitting in my task bar).

 

[Porchland]

How do HD DVD burners present greater legal issues than regular DVDs?

It's all digital content, so why does greater quality mean greater risk?

Besides, has anybody seen one of these yet, and how much do they cost?

My thoughts exactly. HD isn't any sort of "ultimate" quality; it's just a (significantly) higher quality standard than regular old MPEG-2 DVD.

I don't get this either.

 

[iris_failsafe]

HD real deal

Personally, I don't care for HD DVD, because in reality, films won't look "that" better in 1080i or 720p, because they are shot using 24p panavision film cameras, that are no where near the picture quality of native 1080i. I think a lot of people are getting excited to think that they can buy the HD DVD version of say Kill Bill, and it will be in HD, it doesn't work that way, if it wasn't shot in HD I can't be true native HD.
QUOTE]
Actually 135 MM film is 4 times higher that a 720p/1080i digital system. do the math. remember a CCD imager is faster for light sensitivity. hence film grain, uneven light reaction is the pitfall of traditional film.
besides all that is compress into a small viewing space any-ways even with someone who has a "killer" front projection system with a 15 foot screen won't take advantage of all that resolution.

It has been calculated that in order to reproduce film at it's full resolution you need 4000 lines (4K). If you use SONY Digital Cinema cameras you get 3300 lines (Attack of the clones). If you couldn't tell the difference in the Cinema, you won't notice it on your living room.

There are film scanners that can scan the negative at 8k (8000 lines) and transfer it digitally from 24-fps to 30-fps. Also there are houses that specialise in re-mastering film without loosing it's texture (grain) and quality.
Actually the best restoration house is a 100% mac company. Check out the article on Apple's web site.

You are right that HD is not cinema, they plan that second genertion of HD will have the 4000 lines resolution. I guess we will have to wait

 

[squatch]

Paste Transcript/article from Wall Street Journal

Could someone please copy and paste the transcript from WSJ between Mossberg and Jobs here? Not sure if what Jobs said about HD DVD and his comments at D: All Things Digital are from the same article, but I like others am not going to pay just to read one or two articles.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Both HD-DVD and Blu Ray will have excellent CP. Blu Ray has already defined theirs and HD-DVD should be defining theirs soon.

Besides copying 30GB-54GB data files is a litter harder to do. Let's just say little tommy won't be downloading HD movies on P2P anytime soon.

Let us not turn this thread into film vs digital. Of course film is superior in ways but non of us can afford a good film projector so digital will have to do.

HD is important Macs. Final Cut Pro supports HD right now. Apple needs to be at the forefront of affordable HD production, editing and finishing. This means shipping HD Burners as soon as possible. Hollywood isn't losing money and HD CP will be solid. Bring on the gear!

 

[DMann]

It won't be long......

It won't be long before we see HD DVD
formatted machines incorporated into
Apples products - this feature will neither
increase nor decrease the likelihood
of piracy.

 

[dontmatter]

Ick, much as we dont' like to admit it, this is just the overpowered CEO who has a conflict of interest that's too profitable to fix story. Grrr.

 

[vanmonkey]

There is always going to be a way around the encryption/copy protection . . .

Personally, I don't care for HD DVD, becuase in reality, films won't look "that" better in 1080i or 720p, becuase they are shot using 24p panavision film cameras, that are no where near the picture quality of native 1080i. I think alot of people are getting excited to think that they can buy the HD DVD version of say Kill Bill, and it will be in HD, it doesn't work that way, if it wasn't shot in HD I can't be true natice HD.

Sure, you can encode the films at higher bitrates due to larger storage capacity's, and that might make the movies look a little better, but still not HD. I guess the only good thing about HD/Blue Ray DVD is that it has greater storage capicity, which would be good for putting say 4 DVDs on one HD DVD.

Dude, you have no idea what you're talking about. Film is and analogue format. It has far higher resolution then HD does. Have you been to the cinema when they're playing from a digital projector (which has five times the resolution of HD I might add)? It looks absolutely terrible, pixels all over the place.

And as far as your Kill Bill claims go, it was transfered directly to 3k, and on-lined at that resolution, which far exceeds HD. in fact, It's so high that it had to be compressed, otherwise it would take close to 3 gigs a second!

Okay, done ranting, but don't think you know something about something you know nothing about.

 

[nsb3000]

I don't agree with steve on this one..

 

[nsb3000]

Haha. How many times have I seen Mac zealots claim that Steve understands that DRM doesn't work?

Mac zealots should wake up and smell the coffee.

FairPlay: Another Anticompetitive Use of DRM


Steve Jobs loves DRM just as much as Bill Gates.

If this is true, than why don't we even have to enter a serial number to install Panther, or any other Apple application (as far as I am aware)?

 

[nagromme]

People will pirate. Copy protection is needed. That's sad reality. Artists should be compensated for their creativity. Blame the pirates who do what they want instead of what's right. There's a lot of that type about!

Obviously I wish there was no need for such protection, but there is. And I hope it's done so as not to interfere needlessly with legitimate use. FairPlay, for instance, doesn't harm my legal use of my music at all.

 

[swissmann]

I am in the video business. I will be switching up to HD DVD as soon as it becomes available and a consumer standard. I don't believe that after the push with iDVD/DVDSP and integration with DVD burners that Apple would let the HD revolution leave them in the dust. If they do I will have to find an alternate way to produce movies Apple just pushed HD with FCP 4.5 HD. They need to be first with the HD DVD burner and an easy integration with iDVD/DVDSP HD. Besides I don't care how much you try to protect media it will be stolen. All it does in the end is make everyone's life more difficult. What region code is it? Is it encrypted or not? etc. If I make a DVD and want to rip it and change it make it easy! If I own a DVD and want to copy or change it make it easy. If someone is going to steal media they will do it whether or not it is encrypted/protected whatever. Plus you remove the challenge of beating the system if it is not. Make it easy and save the money on the R&D to encrypt in the front end rather than think you will make up the money by having less stolen stuff in the end.

 

[greg75]

If this is true, than why don't we even have to enter a serial number to install Panther, or any other Apple application (as far as I am aware)?

Serial number != DRM.

Besides, the situation is not even comparable. Apple makes more money selling Macs than they do selling standalone MacOS X packages. Microsoft doesn't even sell computers. Piracy of the OS is a larger problem for Microsoft than Apple.

If other music stores used DRM and iTMS didn't, you'd have a point.

 

[Flynnstone]

Tell me who else has hardware in their laptops that can detect a fall and locks the hard drive prior to impact?

Probably everyone !
Most, if not all 2.5" hard disk drives contain an accelerometer to prevent writing "where it's not supposed to".
So just about all laptops have this "technology". It inhibits the write to disk when excessive forces are detected.

 

[nsb3000]

It won't be long before we see HD DVD
formatted machines incorporated into
Apples products - this feature will neither
increase nor decrease the likelihood
of piracy.

While I agree with you here, it is obviously why the film industry wants stronger protections. Just look at the evolution of optical media:

Audio Cds: No copy protection
DVD: Minimal copy protection
HD-DVD: Stronger, but almost certainly crack able copy protection.

The problem with CD’s is that anybody can copy them, even my Mom. While I don’t agree with the RIAA analysis of the size of the impact this has on sales, it certainly has some impact.

I would argue that DVDs are much less of a problem. While it is true that with a little know how you can get around the protections of DVDs, it is complicated enough that the mass majority of users don’t do it.

There will always be a group of hard cores users who can circumvent DRM’s, but if they are strong enough for the majority of users, a little precaution goes a long way.

 

[greg75]

Probably everyone !
Most, if not all 2.5" hard disk drives contain an accelerometer to prevent writing "where it's not supposed to".
So just about all laptops have this "technology". It inhibits the write to disk when excessive forces are detected.

Do you have a source for that?

Laptops incorporate drop-protection 'airbags'

The world's first laptops incorporating automatic protection against the damage caused by a drop have been launched by US computer maker IBM.

The new ThinkPad systems use an onboard accelerometer to detect a sudden fall. If an impact seems imminent, then within a tenth of a second the computer's hard drive stops writing data and the read/write head is retracted to a safe position.

This is to protect the drive from damage that can result from jarring. An impact can cause the drive's heads to skid across the magnetic disks used to store information inside a hard drive, creating unusable sectors and erasing data.

The components most prone to damage are a laptop's hard drive, its display and its keyboard. But losing information stored on the machine's hard drive is the biggest worry for users, IBM believes.

The company compares its Active Protection System to the technology used in automobiles to deploy airbags during an impact. Worldwide product manager for IBM, Bill Iori, told NewsFactor: "The airbag will save the most important part, the driver and passengers. In this case, [the stored data] comes out alive, even if the LCD doesn't."

Active Protection System technology comes with the Thinkpad R50 and T41 laptops. IBM plans to patent the idea.

(newscientist is usually reliable)

 

[slughead]

How do HD DVD burners present greater legal issues than regular DVDs?

It's all digital content, so why does greater quality mean greater risk?

Besides, has anybody seen one of these yet, and how much do they cost?

The biggest reason companies create better media for movies and music is to better push DRM on the consumer. Think about it, if your favorite movie was on VHS, you will buy VHS.

DVDs are better, but that's not the biggest reason the movie companies ended up pushing it so hard. The reason is people were comfortable with the quality loss from copied tapes--it's not that noticeable and if you do notice it, you can just spend more money on better equipment. With the success of Go-video, it's obvious people were willing to go through great lengths to get 'free stuff'. If you copy a DVD to a tape, the quality change is very noticeable.

If it can sell 100,000 more movies (by discouraging piracy), then you may rest assured that's what the media manufacturers will push.

Of course, if you ask me the fact that the best HDTV is only 1080x605, AND interlaced makes me reluctant to buy into it. They should at least make the frame rate a multiple of 16 (like say, 80) to make smooth panning less annoying.. we'll see how OLED TVs do.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

Actually 135 MM film is 4 times higher that a 720p/1080i digital system. do the math. remember a CCD imager is faster for light sensitivity. hence film grain, uneven light reaction is the pitfall of traditional film.
besides all that is compress into a small viewing space anyways even with someone who has a "killer" front projection systme with a 15 foot screen won't take advantage of all that resolution.

Poop on me, then why don't the movies on HD HBO look that much better to me than my regular DVDs? They look better but not not WOW better like 1080i 60 footage. I have a Sony Trinitron 36" model # KV-36HS510 and charter HD cable.

 

[nuckinfutz]

HD

Of course, if you ask me the fact that the best HDTV is only 1080x605, AND interlaced makes me reluctant to buy into it. They should at least make the frame rate a multiple of 16 (like say, 80) to make smooth panning less annoying.. we'll see how OLED TVs do.

Not to sound harsh man but you need to get your facts straight.

HD "is"

1280 x 720 - This is commonly progressive so known as 720p
1980 x 1080 - This can be interlaced(1080i) or progressive (1080p)

You were close but you seem to have mixed the two up a bit. The next standard seems to be 4000 x 2000. Sony just announced a 4k projector for pro use.

Poop on me, then why don't the movies on HD HBO look that much better to me than my regular DVDs? They look better but not not WOW better like 1080i 60 footage. I have a Sony Trinitron 36" model # KV-36HS510 and charter HD cable.

LP I've noticed the same thing. HBO HD doesn't look much better than uprezed DVD IMO. Where HDTV looks absolutely phenom is sports. A good sports game with a direct feed in HD is eye popping. I think todays movies aren't being transferred well to HD in many cases. It's one reason why HDnet wants to run newer movies because of the additional clarity.

 

[uzombie]

hmmm

I'm with Steve on this one.

Though nothing is 100% secure, its in his best interest to
secure comfort in the industry by not selling the very tool
that could hurt his business (Pixar).

True-If someone is going to steal, they will.
I am doubtful, though, that its trully viable on large scale.

Fact is, there is still a poor selection of HD on TV as it stands.
Old titles, even if up-converted, will need serious work and you can't get HD from old films.

Personally, why copy something like a DVD. Say my brother borrows my series of the Family Guy on DVD to watch. He likes it so much, he copies each DVD with some illegal PC program. He buys the blank DVD-Rs (we'll say 6 at $2 each). That's $12. Then, he spends about 4 hours setting up, and burning each one. If at his engineer salary of say $40/hr or more, that $172 he spent to dupe a movie he could have bought, on sale, for $40.

Time=money.

The same goes for CDs. It takes time to rip, organize, label. Some folks have time and no money. And a computer and blank CDs. Or friends. Its still time and money. ( I digress...sorry)

So, have they decided on a HD-DVD standard? Blu ray?

Anyway...
The future is still in UHDV. 4000 lines and almost 4 terabytes of storage for just 3 minutes of footage. And 60 frames a second. Steve, get that damn 3.0+ghz G5 out the door already!

 

[Groves]

hhahahaha holy crap that's the most wrong thing i've ever read. ever.
and i agree with most others here, what the hell is the point of singling out hd dvd burners? why would that be any different than a regular dvd burner? does steve need to pull his head out of his a$$, or am i missing something?

The "thing" that you're missing is that each technology generation (VHS, CD,DVD, HD DVD) is a *fresh* opportunity for content providers to get their DRM ducks in a row before it becomes mainstream, which it will.

it's not that they're singling out HD DVD because of it's difference, but because NOBODY has it yet for all practical purposes, much like black and white televisions.

 

[Parikh1234]

If this is true, than why don't we even have to enter a serial number to install Panther, or any other Apple application (as far as I am aware)?

All pro apple apps have serial numbers.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

Dude, you have no idea what you're talking about. Film is and analogue format. It has far higher resolution then HD does. Have you been to the cinema when they're playing from a digital projector (which has five times the resolution of HD I might add)? It looks absolutely terrible, pixels all over the place.

And as far as your Kill Bill claims go, it was transfered directly to 3k, and on-lined at that resolution, which far exceeds HD. in fact, It's so high that it had to be compressed, otherwise it would take close to 3 gigs a second!

Okay, done ranting, but don't think you know something about something you know nothing about.

Ok besides from me being totally wrong in my statements, film still needs to be compressed, and from my understanding (probably wrong again) HD wouldn't be "have" to be in order to fit on a HD DVD. Plus the film, is still contrained to the 1080i resolution, so it can't get any better than that no matter how good the original footage is. IMHO 1080i footage looks way better than HD film (I'm talking HD HBO movies), and if you ask most people (not film zealots), I think they will agree. I think 1080i looks better becuase it runs at 60fps (I could be wrong again), and film at 24.

 

[slughead]

HD "is"

1280 x 720 - This is commonly progressive so known as 720p
1980 x 1080 - This can be interlaced(1080i) or progressive (1080p)

You were close but you seem to have mixed the two up a bit. The next standard seems to be 4000 x 2000. Sony just announced a 4k projector for pro use.

Oh, I guess I did have it mixed up, thanks for clarifying. Makes sense the vertical dimension is interlaced, not the horizontal.

The framerate problem is still something I'm upset about--They make a 16x9 TV (EXPRESSLY FOR MOVIE VIEWING) and they don't even make it movie framerate compatible. Yes, most of the time you don't notice, but it's really distracting when it starts 'chunking' when doing smooth pans.

 

[ryanw]

If this is true, than why don't we even have to enter a serial number to install Panther, or any other Apple application (as far as I am aware)?

Well, good save. "As far as I am aware"..

These all have Serials or other means to control their software:
Final Cut Pro, Shake, Logic (hardware dongle), DVD Studio Pro, and OSX SERVER.

I'm sure there are others. But you are right, on the CONSUMER side, there are no serials, etc. It would be stupid to go through the hastle (cost) of having serials on iLife (itunes, garageband, iPhoto, iMovie), OSX, etc, expecially since they come free on new macs.