If you look at most notebooks in best buy under $1000, few come with anything other than intel integrated graphics
You really couldn't be more wrong.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...DeactivatedMark=False&ActiveSearchResult=True
If you look at their other selections, theres actually a couple dozen with integrated graphics that are NOT Intel.
But even Intel's 4500M HD is capable of bitstream decoding for blu-ray video. That doesn't mean the video quality would be as good as the integrated 9400M, but it can at least play it.
Second 1080p is not more than than double the resolution of 720p, it's only 50% more pixels, not 200%.
1280x720 = 921,600 pixels. 1920x1080 = 2,073,600. 2,073,600 divided by 921,600 = 2.25.
And its not just pixel count, but bitrate and encoder quality too. A 720p H.264 video at about 6Mbps encoded with x264 looks dramatically better than the usual 4.5Mbps Apple H.264 encoded iTunes "HD" video. To the point of being a night and day difference.
And you don't lose out on sound quality just because macs don't have hdmi. Even pc notebooks that have hdmi usually have terrible integrated sound output that's not capable of surround sound in the first place.
Thats wrong for two reasons. One being that Macs and PCs have the same integrated audio chips these days. My aluminum MacBook and my year older HP notebook have the EXACT same sound chip.
Second, audio doesn't necessarily get processed. You generally bitstream it from the PC over HDMI to a surround sound receiver, where it is then processed.
With the optical output, you're stuck with lossy Dolby Digital and DTS. With HDMI you get lossless audio. The difference on a good system is, literally, night and day.
One last thing, even though the audio processor might be the same in the Mac and the PC, that doesn't mean they will produce the same audio. Analog audio depends on the DAC, amplification stage, and several other components in the system. An audio chip thats like the one in Macs and most PCs is more of a chip that tells the CPU how to decode audio. Look up "AC'97 audio" if you want to know more. But the audio processor in a PC is largely irrelevant when dealing with blu-ray and DVD, because you're sending the audio out, in bitstream form, to another processor. If you want the PC to actually decode it then you need Windows for DVD (since Windows DVD players decode the LFE stream, DVD Player in OS X does not), and you need a high end sound card that wouldn't work with any Mac for blu-ray playback.
Anyway, I have stuff to do. I'm out of here
