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Mac Pro And Bluray Speculation

Apple is frequently the first to incorporate new technologies. USB, ditching the floppy drive, airport wireless networking, firewire. I remember when I had my iBook on campus back in 2002. I was one of the ONLY people that had wireless. A few buildings offered it, and I didn't see many other people sitting around on their laptops, unless they had an illuminated Apple shining on their lap.:)

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple was one of the first to use Blu-Ray, especially seeing they are a contributing company. They have a tendency to take new technologies and make them mainstream. They did it with the Apple II, the original Mac, and they continue to do it today.
 
Bakey said:
The BDR-101 is actually a writer as well as a reader, and to be fair at $1000 [or rather around £650.00 over this side of the pond] it's pretty well priced when considering the cost of the first batch of DVD writers, eg. the Pioneer DVR-S201 authoring drive that retailed at a whacking cost of £12,000! General media writers were by definition significantly cheaper, but I recall purchasing our first DVD-R writer at a cost of around £350.00, with DVD-R5 blank media at around £15.00 a pop - so the economies of scale, etc., IMO makes BD at a pretty good starting point.

As for the Sony BD story I feel a lot of people are indeed watching how well the PS3 takes off to then try and validate the outcome and success of BD. But as you rightly said it's historic and as with the PS2 being such a huge success story which then solidified the consumer need for DVD as a new medium; certainly in Japan the green lights shone very brightly for DVD as a consequence of the PS2 success story!

But all in all personally speaking I hope BD wins; from a technical viewpoint it's able to offer a lot of new and quite exciting features that aren't possible on HD-DVD. And I know my next statement is probably going to cause controversy but HD-DVD is [in simple terms] simply a DVD-Video, but with larger capacity! I know that's generalising A LOT!!

Yes, HD-DVD requires a lot less re-tooling for replication houses, which in turn means it's cheaper to bring to market BUT BD has a lot to offer and I hope and prey it's given a chance!

Anyway, here's to hoping... ;)
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While im all for BR, I don't think the PS3 will be the #1 promoter for it, and I don't thnk the PS2 did all that much. For a few weeks maybe it was my only DVD player when another broke or when we moved one into another room to make way for a new one that hadn't arrived- but really it is limited- not necessarily going to be the best quality BR player, and to be honest, people will buy it because it's a game console. I think that in the future it will be multipurpose devices yet again, yes, but of a different sort. I'm now on my 2nd DVD burner TiVo and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I've burned over 60 DVDs worth so far. If someone makes one Blu-Ray, i'll be all over it as soon as I can afford it. And who knows, the tech savvy may head more for media center computers to drive their home theaters?
So while I think that devices with multiple funcitons will have an effect here, I don't think the PS3 will drive BR to domination on its own.
 
TangoCharlie said:
... and what you'd loose when the disk goes bad :mad:
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so just burn two :)

or just wait until ferroelectric memory comes out- imagine having the equivalent of a few 500GB external HDs in a device the size of a small thumb drive, solid state but without any heads to crash- the capacity of huge HDs, the reliability and ability to maintain data without power of flash memory, and access speed like RAM.
 
Wild speculation?!

I reckon these analyists get thier "information" by reading ThinkSecret and extrapolat even further!

Let's just see when the Mac Pro comes out! Heck, the "analysts" can't even agree which CPU the damn thing(s) are going to have!

(Pssst, Shhh.. don't tell anyone.... it's going to be Intel Xeon 5100 series a.k.a Woodcrest. Shhh. Don't tell anyone I said so!!)


ASIDE:
I used to do lots of work doing image analysis, and I wrote an application imaginitively called "Analysis". In Windows, when I had lots of versions of "Analysis" running, the names on the buttons on my task bar would get truncated. It made several people take a double-take when they saw all these buttons labeled Anal Anal Anal Anal Anal Anal Anal!!

Why did I mention that? Oh, yes, there's a reason they're called Analysts! :D
 
a BTO option would be great.

i'd pop one in if i could afford it- it would be damn useful considering the amount of data i need to archive making films... :rolleyes:
 
Cheaper Blu-ray next month: "BenQ to launch Blu-ray Disc writer in August"

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/07/05/benq/index.php

Blu-ray is awesome for backups as well as HDTV and HD movies in general. You can also have much more content on a Blu-ray than on a HD-DVD disk.

So, should Blu-ray drop prices more to match HD-DVD as seems the trend, the election is clear: Blu-ray for ever!

Apple: go for it with the option ot two-drive BTO Macs. We need them.
 
Chef Medeski said:
So, how long till it comes to laptops? :D

And on top of that, its only going to be a viewer, right? I mean have they created any Blu-ray burners, yet?

I really don't want to buy a Macbook Pro until it has Merom, 802.11n, and blue-ray, cause I know those are all going to be standard in less than a year and I can't afford to have a crippled laptop for 3 yrs.

Hopefully it won't be too far, I've saved enough cash.
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ur goin' to be waitin' a while... just get one now.
 
sam10685 said:
ur goin' to be waitin' a while... just get one now.
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no way! everyone knows that 802.11n and bluray AND HD-DVD 16x 6-layer burners will be in the powerbook g5s next tuesday!

I do think it will be a while though, probably better off getting one in September after Merom is out and just calling it a day.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
Wireless "N"? psh, I'm still using "B".
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It would be nice - in theory - to have a hyper-fast wireless connection; however, what does it matter if my outside line stays at 2M/512k speed? The B-spec is perfectly fine for quite some time.
 
TangoCharlie said:
ASIDE:
I used to do lots of work doing image analysis, and I wrote an application imaginitively called "Analysis". In Windows, when I had lots of versions of "Analysis" running, the names on the buttons on my task bar would get truncated. It made several people take a double-take when they saw all these buttons labeled Anal Anal Anal Anal Anal Anal Anal!!

Why did I mention that? Oh, yes, there's a reason they're called Analysts! :D
Click to expand...

I appreciate your added humor. Thank you.
 
dguisinger said:
Sony has assumed way too much control with Blueray, so if I'd have to pick either format I'd go with HD-DVD. Lets not forget Microsoft is backing HD-DVD on the X-Box 360. Last week when I was at the game store, they said the add-on drive would be coming soon for around $100. Thats alot less than a blueray player.
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And how often have consoled that come in two parts been successful? Sega MegaCD, anyone (Genesis CD)? Developers won't be able to use the HD-DVD drive because they reduce their potential market, so it's just a player. Why not buy a decent stand alone (as soon as there are any - the Toshiba was slated in reviews).

dguisinger said:
Like I said, HD-DVD and Blueray both suck in my opinion, too many DRM controls, too expensive, not enough difference really over DVD for most people....
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That's content owners for you - they'll always demand that. It doesn't mean you can't burn your own disc without rights management - backing up photos etc to 50Gb wouldn't be too bad. A lot easier than changing DVDs 6-12 times.

Given the drives are out there and Apple are supporting the format, there is no reason not to make the option available. In fact given Apple's customer base outside the rabid geek community, Blu-ray creation capabilities would seem the way to go (Blu-Ray Studio Pro?). At £650/$1000 it isn't even that high a percentage of the overall price of a higher spec machine. Macs aren't cheap.
 
JFreak said:
There will be more media once there are more players, and there will be more players once there is more media. Which goes first? Players, naturally. Apple and the rest of the industry will just have to begin selling the players, and then the content will follow. Very soon I'd guess. The new Blu-Ray media can be sold at premium, so I think there will be a lot of discs to buy once certain threshold of players have been installed.
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Well, PS3 will have Blu-Ray in it. And if PS3 is even moderately succesfull, it would mean lots of Blu-Ray-players in the market.
 
iMikeT said:
This is all Sony's fault.:mad: If they learned anything from the Betamax, they should know that when ever they try to standardize a technology, they fail.
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You mean like when they standardised on CD's?
 
JFreak said:
It would be nice - in theory - to have a hyper-fast wireless connection; however, what does it matter if my outside line stays at 2M/512k speed?
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Because those speeds go up? And because you are not always accessing the outside?
 
For a start HD-DVD players can play in 1080p, its just the xbox360 that cant. Th HD-DVD player which comes out for it may be able to, I dont know yet.

Secondly, its not whether it has a blu-ray drive alone, if it did then there is no point buying it, just buy an extra hard drive. It has to have an HDMI connection so that it will also work as a blu-ray player in your HDtv.

I have both an xbox 360 (and I will get the HD-DVD player for a steal I might add) and a Sony Vaio AR with blu-ray hooked up to my HDtv. Yes it is expensive, but when you see the quality its definitely worth it.

I am going to steer clear of the Playstation3. The ps2 and psp just didnt impress me enough, although it will win the console wars simply because its a PlayStation. When you think about it, it has never really had the best console, N64 was better and would have won the first war had it not been on cartlidge and the xbox was better because of the online play, the ps2 was shocking online.
 
Cobrien said:
I have both an xbox 360 (and I will get the HD-DVD player for a steal I might add) and a Sony Vaio AR with blu-ray hooked up to my HDtv. Yes it is expensive, but when you see the quality its definitely worth it.

I am going to steer clear of the Playstation3. The ps2 and psp just didnt impress me enough, although it will win the console wars simply because its a PlayStation. When you think about it, it has never really had the best console, N64 was better and would have won the first war had it not been on cartlidge and the xbox was better because of the online play, the ps2 was shocking online.
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The winner will be nintendo if they get it all done in time the ds has wiped the floor with the psp here in europe .. As for all this blue ray bussines i like the idea of it but not as a main feature of any computer system not just apple ... i am still getting my head around dvd rw -/ what ever format ... Blue ray will just cause more chaos to the public plus at the current prices they can sod off...
 
Sabenth said:
The winner will be nintendo if they get it all done in time the ds has wiped the floor with the psp here in europe .. As for all this blue ray bussines i like the idea of it but not as a main feature of any computer system not just apple ... i am still getting my head around dvd rw -/ what ever format ... Blue ray will just cause more chaos to the public plus at the current prices they can sod off...
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I hope the ninitendo will win as it means that for once he innovative ideas will win rather than the companies who try to make it look better and more powerful. It would be wonderfully refreshing. I'm from Scotland by the way an I knwo about four people with a ds and everyone has a psp. Its a shame beause it may not look as good people immediately think its worse.
 
JFreak said:
It'll take a while before B-spec becomes too slow for web surfing ;)
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But there are lots of people who use the wireless for more than just web-surfing. Hell, WLAN is used at my workplace quite extensively in place of wired ethernet. That was the whole point of my comment. I (among others) use network-connectivity (wired or otherwise) for other things besides web-surfing

As to just web-surfing.... In the time of few years my internet-connection has moved from 512KB to 8MB. I could go to 12 or 24MB right now. The speed-increase has been FAST.
 
I would like to point out a few things:
-Of course BluRay burners will be optional in Macs (until they cost around the same as DVD writers cost now)
-A BluRay writer will allow people to record movies on their HD camera (Sony and co already have a few pro-sumer models out) and then burn them in HD to BD-R using upcoming versions of iDVD and DVDstudio.
-You will be able to watch HD movies on your Mac.

Also I personally want BluRay to win over HD-DVD because it will mean that we won't need another new format for many years to come. BluRay has plans for 200GB disks.

HD-DVD may be fine for current HD movies, but what happens when we move to even higher resolutions and to 3D (Lucas and Jackson both have plans to release their movies in 3D).
 
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