MBP 2010 : Where's the bluray option?

[therealseebs]

I am told, though I can't verify it, that BluRay's "you must not screw up and allow people to crack our security" agreement specifies a penalty in terms of a percentage of your total revenue as a company for failures.

Apple's revenue is insanely large. The marginal gain they get from blu-ray is very small. The risk to them is way, way, bigger than the benefit. If that's correct, it would be extremely stupid of them to do bluray.

Bluray's a crappy "standard" that exists for the same reason as memory stick -- to be an incompatible thing which funnels money to Sony. I don't care about it, I'm not getting any, and I'm just gonna wait for something better.

When CDs came out, essentially no one could afford a hard drive big enough to hold the data on a single CD. They remained larger than normal hard drives for a decade or so. When DVDs came out, you could get disks big enough to hold a DVD image, but it was pricey and not very useful. When blu-ray came out, it was extremely difficult to find a computer, even a small laptop, that didn't have more storage than two blu-ray discs.

It's just not worth it. The benefit of optical media is in the comparative difference between the media and bandwidth. BR is about 10x the size of DVD (very approximately; it's more like 10x than like 2x or 50x), but bandwidth has gone up a lot more than 10x since DVD came out.

So I'm pretty sure it's a short-term phenomenon at best, and I'm skipping it. I would have been less inclined to buy a MBP if it had come with BR.

 

[gagaliya]

does anyone know why no manufacture will make a mbp compatible bluray drive, so you can just swap out the superdrive and put the bluray in? I would pay $300 for it.

Almost all of my movies are in bluray now as well as netflix, it's ridiculus i dont have an option to watch them on mbp :/

 

[gagaliya]

I am told, though I can't verify it, that BluRay's "you must not screw up and allow people to crack our security" agreement specifies a penalty in terms of a percentage of your total revenue as a company for failures.

Apple's revenue is insanely large. The marginal gain they get from blu-ray is very small. The risk to them is way, way, bigger than the benefit. If that's correct, it would be extremely stupid of them to do bluray.

Bluray's a crappy "standard" that exists for the same reason as memory stick -- to be an incompatible thing which funnels money to Sony. I don't care about it, I'm not getting any, and I'm just gonna wait for something better.

When CDs came out, essentially no one could afford a hard drive big enough to hold the data on a single CD. They remained larger than normal hard drives for a decade or so. When DVDs came out, you could get disks big enough to hold a DVD image, but it was pricey and not very useful. When blu-ray came out, it was extremely difficult to find a computer, even a small laptop, that didn't have more storage than two blu-ray discs.

It's just not worth it. The benefit of optical media is in the comparative difference between the media and bandwidth. BR is about 10x the size of DVD (very approximately; it's more like 10x than like 2x or 50x), but bandwidth has gone up a lot more than 10x since DVD came out.

So I'm pretty sure it's a short-term phenomenon at best, and I'm skipping it. I would have been less inclined to buy a MBP if it had come with BR.

people want bluray to watch high def movies, i dont know what deep end you went into with that rant.

 

[therealseebs]

people want bluray to watch high def movies,

I could, in theory, care less about something than I care about high def movies. I don't know what it would be. Maybe there's an ant a couple of blocks from my house that I care less about, but I can't be bothered to research it.

i dont know what deep end you went into with that rant.

Well, let's see.

1. I identified a plausible reason for which Apple would decide not to ship a blu-ray product.
2. I explained why blu-ray is probably a short-term technology.
3. Coupled together, these suggest that it is very unlikely that Apple will adopt blu-ray in the future, because doing so would expose them to a huge risk, while the benefit of offering blu-ray is small now and appears to be decreasing rapidly.

 

[vasuba]

Apple is one of the founding members of the Blu Ray Association.

The reality is They do not want to give us Blu Ray because it would mean lost money to apple.

Apple gets a 30% commission on Itunes Sales. They get 0% commission on Blu Ray sales. So in the end they want to lock you into buying movies etc from Itunes where they get a nifty profit. In the end that is the only thing that matters to Apple.

Apple rather kill off direct ownership of products and shift to a digital distribution because they win and you lose. As others have mentioned ISPs are becoming very aggressive on download caps so digital distribution is never gonna get to a maximum point unless governments ban caps.

 

[therealseebs]

Apple is one of the founding members of the Blu Ray Association.

This does not mean that they are immune to the penalty clauses that the blu ray association ended up with.

Me, I will not be at all sad to see BR die.

 

[Jazojas12]

I don't understand why everyone is shooting down an OPTION? Cool you don't like it, don't get it. Simple.

I own 100+ BDs. I watch them on two different TVs and at other places sometimes. I don't want to lug around my laptop, case, charger, remote when I could carry a disc..So let's say it's digital and where I'm at there isn't fast internet, it would still be faster to drive to the store and buy a BD than wait for a download.

Like someone mentioned, gohastings.com sells used BDs. I've never purchased one with a single scratch and I've bought more than half of mine from there. Do you know how much more I would have paid downloading them? Not to mention how much space that would take up.
So I have 100 movies, at 25GB each. There alone I would need 3TB hard drives to store those and how do I know which movie is on which drive without going through them? And again it's easier to bring a disc vs a hard drive somewhere.

Optical media is not safe, cds dvds or blu rays are being corrupted in time.

* They are wasting your space in your cupboard
* It is not easy to find what you are looking for when you have hundreds of CDs
* It is taking long time to burn them

THEY ARE TOTALLY TIME WASTERS !

There is no point to buy a blu ray drive when there are cheap 1TB - 2TB external hard drives..

Even I do not want a dvd drive in my macbook pro, if it was optional to get a macbook pro without a dvd drive, that would be my choice

I wonder which would outlast the other, BD or HDD?
Mine are in alphabetical order, I could find that faster than turning on my computer and searching for it. Unless you don't know the order of 26 letters?
Download time vs burn time? :-/
So you want the OPTION for no drive but not an option for a different drive?

The marginal gain they get from blu-ray is very small.

But there is a gain, not a loss.

 

[Hmac]

Apple is one of the founding members of the Blu Ray Association.

The reality is They do not want to give us Blu Ray because it would mean lost money to apple.

Apple gets a 30% commission on Itunes Sales. They get 0% commission on Blu Ray sales. So in the end they want to lock you into buying movies etc from Itunes where they get a nifty profit. In the end that is the only thing that matters to Apple.

Apple rather kill off direct ownership of products and shift to a digital distribution because they win and you lose. As others have mentioned ISPs are becoming very aggressive on download caps so digital distribution is never gonna get to a maximum point unless governments ban caps.

Sounds like an excellent business decision.

 

[therealseebs]

I don't understand why everyone is shooting down an OPTION? Cool you don't like it, don't get it. Simple.

I'm not shooting it down, I'm pointing out why Apple would not provide it.

But there is a gain, not a loss.

There is a very small gain... Coupled with a risk of a huge loss. Like, several orders of magnitude bigger.

How about this deal. I give you fifty bucks, BUT! If something outside your control happens within the next year, you have to give me thirty thousand.

Sound good? No? Then why should Apple do it?

 

[Cougarcat]

does anyone know why no manufacture will make a mbp compatible bluray drive, so you can just swap out the superdrive and put the bluray in? I would pay $300 for it.

No, and even if there were, it wouldn't matter unless you wanted to use windows––there's no way to play Blu-Rays in OS X. Edit: OK, I found this: http://www.digistor.com/Panasonic-Slim-Blu-ray-Burner-Slimline-SATA-Slot-Load but again, you'd have the problem with playback. VLC can play the Blu-Ray HD files, but you'd have to rip them (I believe) in order to get around the copy protection.

I thought I remember reading somewhere that the delay is due to the fact that slim slot-loading Blu-Ray drives in the size that Apple uses do not yet exist (or if they do, are too expensive.) Anyone know if this is true? Are there PCs on the market with slotloading drives?

I do not buy the argument that Apple wants you to buy movies from iTunes, and therefore they will never use Blu-Ray. The iTunes store makes a lot less money than people think; it is actually barely profitable. Its existence is to sell Apple hardware. It's in Apple's best interest to make their hardware as attractive as possible. Not having Blu-Ray options in 2010 just looks bad.

Besides, I don't see the markets for Blu-Ray versus iTunes downloads to be necessarily competing. You use iTunes when you care about convenience; you buy Blu-Rays when you care about quality (in both video and extras).

 

[neteng101]

No, and even if there were, it wouldn't matter unless you wanted to use windows––there's no way to play Blu-Rays in OS X.

Part of that you got to blame the MPAA for with all their copy protection crap. They and the RIAA are reasons I've stopped spending money on DVDs/BDs/CDs. Look at their latest proposal...

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/RIAA-MPAA-Illegal-downloads-Torrent,news-6496.html

I think a BD drive for the sake of storage is good, but its not needed at this point as a DL-DVD stores plenty.

 

[alphaod]

Why does everyone want Bluray so badly?

It's not like anybody buys movies anyways.

And for data, Bluray disks are still freaking expensive… and when you have coast, it's one hell of an expensive coaster.

 

[Vinniefish]

I download 25-50 GB Blu-Ray images from usenet all the time. I have over 300 movies and about the same amount of tv shows in 1080p with 5.1 DTS. I store it on my home server and have it wired with gigabit Ethernet. It plays fine on my Mac Mini with Plex. I for one could care less about having a Blu-Ray drive.

 

[Cougarcat]

Why does everyone want Bluray so badly?

It's not like anybody buys movies anyways.

Because to me, the increase in image quality is significant, and the only way to get that image quality on the mac right now is to either a) download .mkv files (convenient and illegal) or b) buy the movie and rip it (arduous and time-consuming).

All I have to say is, by the time the Extended Editions of LOTR come out on Blu-Ray, Apple better have its act together!

 

[vasuba]

I download 25-50 GB Blu-Ray images from usenet all the time. I have over 300 movies and about the same amount of tv shows in 1080p with 5.1 DTS. I store it on my home server and have it wired with gigabit Ethernet. It plays fine on my Mac Mini with Plex. I for one could care less about having a Blu-Ray drive.

Of course you do not care you are stealing product. We are talking about legitimate ownership and usage.

 

[dukebound85]

I download 25-50 GB Blu-Ray images from usenet all the time. I have over 300 movies and about the same amount of tv shows in 1080p with 5.1 DTS. I store it on my home server and have it wired with gigabit Ethernet. It plays fine on my Mac Mini with Plex. I for one could care less about having a Blu-Ray drive.

you cant be serious

 

[nikhsub1]

i remember reading somewhere that steve jobs was more into digital media...he doesnt really believe in bluray cuz it was a big bag of fail

Yeah that is a super intelligent post right there. I guess I am old school. I still buy CD's, MP3's sound like garbage to me so playing an ipod on my home stereo system sounds awful. BluRay discs are here to stay and I buy movies on bluray as well. What I can't do on my Mac is watch them or rip them. This is utterly stupid.

 

[Vinniefish]

you cant be serious

It's way more convenient plus then I don't have to put up with all the DRM crap that blu-rays are laden with. I have no problem paying for a better solution.

 

[Cougarcat]

BluRay discs are here to stay and I buy movies on bluray as well. What I can't do on my Mac is watch them or rip them. This is utterly stupid.

Apparently you can rip them, based on this topic. Looks like a major pain though.

 

[gagaliya]

I could, in theory, care less about something than I care about high def movies. I don't know what it would be. Maybe there's an ant a couple of blocks from my house that I care less about, but I can't be bothered to research it.

pure brilliance right there, yes hd movies are all a sham, stick with your tube tv.

anyway back to the question - why are there no third party bluray drive that is compatible with mbp. Is it because the drive is so thin?

 

[dukebound85]

pure brilliance right there, yes hd movies are all a sham, stick with your tube tv.

anyway back to the question - why are there no third party bluray drive that is compatible with mbp. Is it because the drive is so thin?

there isnt a slot loading drive that is that thin yet

 

[snouter]

Apple it making it clear they are going digital.

Going digital has not been awesome so far.

.mp3 music is a step down in quality and DRM only annoys legitimate customers.

Netflix and iTunes are convenient, but the quality is still nowhere near a physical disc.

The pricing is not that much better, especially considering that you are buying digital copies of things you have possibly already bought in other formats in the past.

Digital games and software has worked out ok, for the most part. But I've still had some DRM and serial number problems with stuff like Direct2Drive. Steam has done right by me to this point, but I only use it on my PC.

 

[ReviewPC]

I think the best option will be third party support of external blu-ray. I love my blu-ray movies, and not a single one of them is scratched (in comparison to my dvds). I have over 1800 movies in my movie library, and they are kept on shelves like my books. Even my dvds rarely get scratched.

I think apple should support blu-ray and offer it as an option. Since video production is one of the #1 selling point for Mac Pros.

I believe Jobs just doesn't want to pay to license the technology. He has to release that iTunes will not replace everyone's home theatre systems and people not buying discs.

Also the folks above are right. Many US based internet provider have data caps (comcast has the 250GB per month for example). So what, after we watch a few movies a month in addition to gaming and normal stuff there is no data left.

 

[snouter]

Jobs wants control because he believes he has the best aesthetic view of the future.

This is why he wars on Microsoft (even though he's lot more like M$ now than he'd care to admit) and he wars on Flash and he wars on Blu-Ray.

 

[Cougarcat]

there isnt a slot loading drive that is that thin yet

Yeah, the MacBooks use 9.5 mm drives. The Panasonic one I linked to is 12.7 and will work only the non-unibody 17-inch MacBook pro (and PowerBooks, but that would be pointless). If I were apple I'd just make the cases pre-unibody size, but they are obsessed with thinness.

Of course, Apple could shove 12.7 mm blu-rays in the iMac if they wanted to...