Phil Schiller Claims Customers Aren't Asking for Built-In Blu-Ray Anymore

[iMikeT]

Funny because I sent a request to Apple via apple.com/feedback to support Blu-Ray in OS X and I'll even buy an external Apple Blu-Ray drive to replace my built-in not so SuperDrive in my iMac.

As much as I do prefer streaming and could care less for a built-in optical drive, I would like this option however.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Not cool.
Not to speak of the horrible german synchronisation most movies suffer from. There are bi-lingual versions, yes, but it´s just a handful and not really worth mentioning. And some movies are missing completely.

Same problem here (non-native English speaker also having an account in a non-US store) - the foreign consumer support (via English closed captions at least, let alone multiple audio tracks or subs in other languages, not only English) is abysmal in the iTunes Store movies.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Bluray does 1080p from the start. You can scale it down, though, so it gets even better.

Clearly your rant has affected your cognitive ability to get my point. I said iTunes movie purchases were adaptable. My content can be upgraded because it is in a more fluid digital factor. I have no idea why you rebutted with this banal nonsense.

 

[samcraig]

Yes but Blu-ray isn't adaptable. Remember when Apple was able to automatically upgrade movies purchased through iTunes at 720p to 1080p versions for no cost? Can Blu-ray do that?

What needs to be adapted? It's already got a superior bitrate and uncompressed audio.

Apple had to upgrade their movies because they upgraded Apple TV - which was behind the curve compared to other streaming services.

And actually - to your point - the disc itself isn't adaptable. But what's on it can be. IE - most players are software upgradeable. Which is how, for example, the PS3 was able to start playing 3D movies.

And back to the price thing (not that you stated it)

If an iTunes HD movie is 19.99 and there's a blu-ray version (which these days typically comes with the blu-ray, dvd and streaming version for the same price) - what advantage other than not having to either a) go to a store or b) wait for it to be delivered) does buying the iTunes version have vs what you give up.

 

[portishead]

(bold emphasizing by me)

"Can". Too bad iTunes Store movies have significantly worse image (appr. 3-5 Mbps vs. 20-30 Mbps encoding bitrate), audio (no multichannel support) and subtitle/ closed caption (there is no CC's for the vast majority of iTunes Store titles) support / content.

Maybe I should have been more specific, but I agree with you, iTunes is severely lacking in bitrate and features as you stated. Although, I have heard rumors of subtitle/cc support coming soon, but I guess that should be obvious.

 

[everything-i]

Apple has lost its way. I'm surprised it's not even an opinion on the mac pro, as lots of people who use their mac for actual work (rather than, I don't know, playing angry birds on a 27" screen) would benefit from being able to make backups of their data using blue ray.

Thing is blue ray is not really that good for backup because its slow and expensive. Easier these days to get a couple of terebites of external HHD and use that. I don't know anyone using BR for backups but know plenty using external hard drives.

 

[Mr. Gates]

"A single-layer blu-ray disc will typically have the capacity to hold 25gb. A dual-layer blu-ray disc can hold up to 50gb. To guarantee that the blu-ray design is easily expandable, the medium may permit storage capacities of up to 100-200 gigabytes. A 25gb disk can hold approximately four hours of high definition video or 11 hours of standard definition video."


Yeah ......why in the world would I want that ?

I prefer using magnetic hard drives and other forms of storage that deteriorate over time.

I also would rather keep my stuff in the cloud so I have to pay monthly fees on it for the rest of my life

*** APPLE with it's head up it's ass ....asking everyone to follow, as usual ***

 

[paul4339]

I seriously wonder if Apple is out of their minds. It´s one thing to not include bluray, but leaving out an optical drive altogether on a desktop machine? Come on, motha******. I´m seriosly upset about this. Here´s why:

...

hi, would an external optical drive work for you?

 

[Menneisyys2]

Yes but Blu-ray isn't adaptable. Remember when Apple was able to automatically upgrade movies purchased through iTunes at 720p to 1080p versions for no cost? Can Blu-ray do that?

Basically, if you can play back 720p on Apple hardware (*), you can also play back 1080p so the native 1080p resolution of BD will work just fine. Any 2008+ Apple x86 desktop / notebook model plays back 1080p without stuttering (VLC + MKV combo) -ok, prolly the first Air is an exception.

*: Apple TV 2 and the iPad 1 / iPhone 4 (and the iPad 2 before iOS5) are exceptions. The latter can play back 1080p30 just fine but not via synching them via iTunes' Videos tab (but via iTunes File Sharing).

 

[JAT]

Simply look at the rise of Netflix. They transition from DVD rentals to streaming in a blink of an eye.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/tech...umes-third-americas-internet-bandwidth/44264/

This is HUGE

What they really did is nearly end their own company. By trying to dictate what their customers really wanted. Yes, people divided up after that, choosing disc vs streaming. But that was hardly a great moment in the history of entertainment and the internet.

At the same time, they began dropping the number of streams you could receive to 1. So, basically, they were against both discs and streaming choice, in an all-out effort to increase short term revenue. That lost them a bunch more customers before, oh...February or so, when they came to their senses (slightly) and began allowing more streams again. (denying the whole thing the whole time)

Not exactly a great example.

 

[lowbatteries]

If you ever heard a Blu-Ray DTS HD Master over a decent home theater (which btw is specced up to 10MBit/s stream for audio) you wouldn't talk this stuff out of your backs.

If Apple are never going to include a Blu-Ray drive then they need to offer Movies and TV Shows from iTunes at Blu-Ray bitrate with the HD audio tracks in place and include HD Audio support in the Apple TV etc.

People ... stop talking about bitrate. Bitrate does correlate to quality, but only when comparing files in the exact same format. Comparing the file size of a blu-ray movie to the file size of an iTunes movie doesn't make sense. It's like saying Laser Discs are better than DVDs because they are bigger.

 

[iLLUMI]

How the heck is Blu-ray expensive? It costs around $25, and you usually get a Blu-ray/DVD combo with that, as well as a digital copy.

From what a friend of mine tells me the digital copy can be copied to hard drive, thus you can still buy the Blu-ray movie disks, copy to hard drive and play them from there using the relevant software. So I believe anyway. Thus you don't need to have a physical blu-ray drive built in to your Mac. Of course you'd still need a Blu-ray drive to copy the disc to you hard drive, but you could have that as an external device.

What we need to have is a place to purchase and download Blu-ray quality movies. Or is there already somewhere this can be done?
I agree that optical disks are somewhat a thing of the past but then the question is how do we easily obtain high quality digital media? Perhaps instead of utilising Blu-ray discs they could sell these high quality movies on thumb drives? Therefore all you need is a spare USB drive which Macs have plenty of.

 

[ncaissie]

I don't have a bluray player in my house at all. Bluray movies are overpriced and inconvenient. I much prefer netflix streaming. The image quality is sharp enough for me.

That’s fine for you and the 23 people who checked the thumbs up on your post.
If you are happy with Crap video then so be it. You likely have a crap standard def. TV anyway.

I prefer quality. I will buy an external drive if I stay with Apple.

 

[naersjoen]

You're right, Phil- we're not asking for it anymore; we've given up hope. Self-fulfilling prophecy much?

As for me, I'll stop being interested in Blu-ray as soon as there's something better. There isn't yet- certainly not iTunes.

Seconded. I naïvely waited 2+ years for Apple to implement Blu-ray, but gave up when they eliminated the optical drive from the Mac Mini and the Retina MBP instead. Downloading/streaming is not for me. So I bought an external Samsung drive (~100 Euros) and the Mac Blu-ray Player (~40 Euros). I can now take screenshots using the player itself, and rip Blu-rays, if necessary, using MakeMKV. It doesn't come cheap, but chances are most of this would be even more difficult to accomplish if Apple implemented Blu-ray into their products.

Oh and the Mac Blu-ray Player doesn't care about region code out of the box. The only thing I am still trying to figure out is how to take screenshots of Blu-ray menus (not the most common use case I imagine) - the Mac player only offers generic menus. Power DVD (installed on my Windows partition) does show the menus, but it seems next to impossible to take a screenshot of a Blu-ray in Windows (advice welcome).

 

[Menneisyys2]

Maybe I should have been more specific, but I agree with you, iTunes is severely lacking in bitrate and features as you stated. Although, I have heard rumors of subtitle/cc support coming soon, but I guess that should be obvious.

Being a non-English speaker, I need at least English CC's to understand / catch everything 100%. Therefore, the first thing I check when browsing the iTunes Store videos whether they have CC's. (I don't purchase anything w/o CC's for the reason outlined above.)

Unfortunately, the situation doesn't seem to get better. For example, still none of the Monty Python (or related - e.g., John Cleese ("Fawlty Towers" etc.)) movies / episodes have CC's.

 

[lowbatteries]

And they don't include a floppy drive either! GRRRRR!

 

[7709876]

Anthony! Either that or a version of Apple TV with a blu-ray drive. Best of both worlds in one device.

Not going to happen though, is it?

Mac Mini with Blu-Ray would just be the perfect HTPC

 

[kevinpdoyle]

As a household of three macs I would much rather pay for one external optical drive rather than 3 computers that each have an optical drive.

 

[nick42983]

Personally I don't watch Blu Ray or DVDs anymore (wish I'd bought Apple stock instead of a 100 DVDs from 2000-2010 . Even with all the complaining, it's a testament to how much people love their Macs to want to watch Blu Ray movies on them rather than on their flat screen TV/home theatre setup.

It'd be silly for Apple to include Blu Ray players to appease a small minority, when it wouldn't appreciably increase their sales, would work against their iTunes business model and would add another mechanical device to their meticulously designed machines, thus increasing cost, size, weight and the chance of failure.

I welcome E-books so that I don't have to keep adding heavy, physical books to my collection. No one is complaining about not having an optical drive in the new Macbooks/iMacs to play their CDs, we're comfortable with digital music. The same should go for movies. Download your content or rip and upload it, find a solution to play what you want on your machine or just watch it on your TV. #FirstWorldProblems

 

[nuckinfutz]

What needs to be adapted? It's already got a superior bitrate and uncompressed audio.

Apple had to upgrade their movies because they upgraded Apple TV - which was behind the curve compared to other streaming services.

And actually - to your point - the disc itself isn't adaptable. But what's on it can be. IE - most players are software upgradeable. Which is how, for example, the PS3 was able to start playing 3D movies.

And back to the price thing (not that you stated it)

If an iTunes HD movie is 19.99 and there's a blu-ray version (which these days typically comes with the blu-ray, dvd and streaming version for the same price) - what advantage other than not having to either a) go to a store or b) wait for it to be delivered) does buying the iTunes version have vs what you give up.

h.265 is going to be ratified soon (likely 2013) if I can have my content updated to the new more efficient codec I will likely see a 40-50% reduction in my storage requirements per movie. This can be done with stores like iTunes but Blu-ray is going to require new hardware.

The players are software upgradable but you cannot plugin new codecs. You're still stuck with MPEG2, AVC

 

[kevinpdoyle]

That’s fine for you and the 23 people who checked the thumbs up on your post.
If you are happy with Crap video then so be it. You likely have a crap standard def. TV anyway.

I prefer quality. I will buy an external drive if I stay with Apple.

As you should, but for those of us who don't want one why should we have to have one?

 

[Anuba]

Anyone catch the latest South Park episode, "A Nightmare on FaceTime"?

Randy Marsh proudly announces that he's bought a Blockbuster Video store which he thinks will make the family filthy rich. They're skeptical since streaming has rendered brick and mortar video stores obsolete. Unsurprisingly, there are no customers except some girl in 80's clothes who is looking for Turner & Hooch, but she turns out to be a ghost. iPads are prominently featured, you'd almost think it was an Apple-sponsored episode given the timing... either way it was a hilarious take on physical media vs streaming.

 

[robopath]

This is no way to treat customers who are used to being at the cutting edge of technology.

Physical media, in any form, is not the cutting edge of technology.
This is from June of 2011, quote of interest:
"Instead of continuing to pour money into a doomed format, why not look ahead?"

http://www.technobuffalo.com/home-entertainment/blu-ray-disc-sales-not-living-up-to-expectations/

 

[Eidorian]

h.265 is going to be ratified soon (likely 2013) if I can have my content updated to the new more efficient codec I will likely see a 40-50% reduction in my storage requirements per movie. This can be done with stores like iTunes but Blu-ray is going to require new hardware.

The players are software upgradable but you cannot plugin new codecs. You're still stuck with MPEG2, AVC

What hardware currently supports h.265?

 

[nuckinfutz]

What they really did is nearly end their own company. By trying to dictate what their customers really wanted. Yes, people divided up after that, choosing disc vs streaming. But that was hardly a great moment in the history of entertainment and the internet.

At the same time, they began dropping the number of streams you could receive to 1. So, basically, they were against both discs and streaming choice, in an all-out effort to increase short term revenue. That lost them a bunch more customers before, oh...February or so, when they came to their senses (slightly) and began allowing more streams again. (denying the whole thing the whole time)

Not exactly a great example.

That was a pricing issue but it is undeniable that streaming is not only mainstream but likely the future. When netflix is accounting for a third of bandwidth that's a big deal.

What you consider a bad example is constructing a scarecrow argument. The foundation of my point wasn't poor decisions by netflix in their pricing strategy it was a discussion founded in the efficacy of online streaming.