You can buy a lot of standalone blu ray players but it has no native OS X support. Thats the issue. And the third party software that are used to play movies out of these external players peg the CPU to its max.
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Phil Schiller Claims Customers Aren't Asking for Built-In Blu-Ray Anymore
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You can buy a lot of standalone blu ray players but it has no native OS X support. Thats the issue. And the third party software that are used to play movies out of these external players peg the CPU to its max.
Just use the free program handbrake. It work well and is very easy to use. Open in iTunes the .m4v file created with handbrake and it will import it into iTunes.
Yep
When we got a new 2010 Mac Pro, we loaded it with everything available, including a blue ray burner/player.
We have yet to burn a blu ray. No client has ever asked for one.
When we got a new 2010 Mac Pro, we loaded it with everything available, including a blue ray burner/player.
We have yet to burn a blu ray. No client has ever asked for one.
TDK has already come out with a 120 GB disc, which is supposedly good for 4K movies. The streaming bandwidth will never be enough to stream the movies and all the compression algorithm's are maxed out.
iTunes will be a big bummer when movies formats get bigger and bigger, TV screens will get bigger and bigger and Apple will be the lone soldier forcing us to watch crappy video from their iTunes stores.
All this hurt, because the penny pincher Apple don't want to pay licensing fees. When someone has invented something you *pay* them ! Isn't that what Apple's lawsuit against other companies is? But they never want to pay others !!!! Want it for free ! Stingy bastids !
See above - rip to MKV's (takes some minutes only) and VLC will play it back at not too high a CPU usage. (Even on a 2.8Ghz C2D late 2009 17" MBP, at 60-70% at most. On more up-to-date models, with much lower CPU usage.)
So Lame
Really lame. Hey Apple I'm not gonna spend more money on your over priced itunes movies when I can get DVDs and Blu Rays way cheaper. Also what the heck am I supposed to do with the discs I have?!
Really lame. Hey Apple I'm not gonna spend more money on your over priced itunes movies when I can get DVDs and Blu Rays way cheaper. Also what the heck am I supposed to do with the discs I have?!
I just want it to be supported on the software level. Third parties can give us good external drives.
There's a niche of people that will always want to get the best version available, the most complete. Those people will always buy Blu-ray Discs, and 4K BDs when they come around. Eventually bandwidth and storage will allow most people to download/stream everything they want in reference quality. All the special features enthusiasts want. Even then some will still hold out until there is no DRM (or it's trivial like DVD/BD). They should at least support these formats in software, it would attract more manufacturers to build external drives.
If Apple made their own sleek, high-priced external we would buy that too.
There's a niche of people that will always want to get the best version available, the most complete. Those people will always buy Blu-ray Discs, and 4K BDs when they come around. Eventually bandwidth and storage will allow most people to download/stream everything they want in reference quality. All the special features enthusiasts want. Even then some will still hold out until there is no DRM (or it's trivial like DVD/BD). They should at least support these formats in software, it would attract more manufacturers to build external drives.
If Apple made their own sleek, high-priced external we would buy that too.
It might come as a surprise to you, but OS X Mountain Lion still supports floppies. That's the difference, I can go out and buy a 3rd party USB floppy and it works.
It doesn't however support Blu-ray at all. No one is asking Apple to provide hardware and playback software. Just the OS support so that 3rd parties can implement it.
Another person who has no idea what they are talking about and has no clue about how much DVD cost when it was introduced. The price difference between new release DVDs and Blu-ray is a few dollars.
Price to rent a DVD through Redbox: $1
Price to rent a Blu-ray through Redbox: $1.50
Price to rent a movie through iTunes with no extras, lower quality picture and audio: $5
Yeah, Blu-ray is way overpriced.
The amount of people saying "it's good enough for me" epitomizes the customer base of Apple now. Forget quality amongst discerning users, as long as it's passable that's all that matters.
What a great win for everyone who actually gives a damn, when the Apple user base is now being dominated by those who don't care about quality as long as it's spoonfed in the easiest way possible.
Exactly what I was thinking. To back up my photos would take hundreds of DVDs. I just use an external 2TB drive for on-site backup and another copy in the cloud for things I really give a **** about.
All the movies we get now are streaming of some flavor. Can't remember the last time we played an actual blu-ray disc.
I don't want to download movies from iTunes for the following reasons :
1. Poor video bitrate
2. Poor audio bitrate and lack of HD audio.
3. Lack of extras.
A movie downloaded from iTunes is inferior to a Blu-Ray. When iTunes offers movies that are equal to what is available on Blu-Ray I will consider them.
They also need to enable me to resell a movie downloaded from iTunes or buy a movie second hand. You know, like I can with a Blu-Ray. Can I lend an iTunes download to a friend like I can with a Blu-Ray I buy?
At the moment Apple offer an inferior product for more money. As a rational consumer you would be making an irrational decision to buy an iTunes movie.
1. Poor video bitrate
2. Poor audio bitrate and lack of HD audio.
3. Lack of extras.
A movie downloaded from iTunes is inferior to a Blu-Ray. When iTunes offers movies that are equal to what is available on Blu-Ray I will consider them.
They also need to enable me to resell a movie downloaded from iTunes or buy a movie second hand. You know, like I can with a Blu-Ray. Can I lend an iTunes download to a friend like I can with a Blu-Ray I buy?
At the moment Apple offer an inferior product for more money. As a rational consumer you would be making an irrational decision to buy an iTunes movie.
Right. This too. And Apple clearly has no desire to actually work on their OS to make it work correctly and they don't want to fork over any licensing fees.
What I object to is the spin. Apple tells people what they want them to believe. I don't fault them for this - it's PR afterall. And marketing.
But I'd have more respect for them if they just said "Apple isn't making a computer with a blu-ray drive because it's a decision we've made and a technology we don't find important or of value to our customers" or simply "No - Apple isn't supporting Blu-Ray on our computers"
Trying to imply otherwise is smoke and mirrors.
I can't imagine that preventing consumers from buying cheap second-hand CDs and ripping them for a fraction of the cost of tracks and albums on iTunes doesn't play at least a small part in Apple's decision to remove optical drives from desktops.
Physical media is important when you do business. I almost have to burn a cd or a DVD every week for a client because their mailbox is incapable of accepting a 100 meg file, or they are too old to complete a download from a private server. The last thing I need is an external media recording device like the cassette recorder I had hocked to my vic20 in the early-mid 80s. Apple is wrong about what people want or need in the work place. I use apple products because I hate windows OS, nevertheless, as apple becomes more of an entertainment media provider, they are focusing less on what professionals need.
Not all of us live in areas where true speedy Internet is available. It takes few minutes to burn a cd/DVD, while it may take up to an hour to upload the same media from a busy office with over 30 agents sharing a 3-5mb/s upload speed line.
I don't need a super thin iMac, I need a powerful machine that has everything i need built into it and takes a little of my desk space as possible.
As for blue ray, what is the heck is that? ;-). I really don't know anyone who has one except for some few old farts, love you dad, who bought a player at bestbuy thinking it was just another DVD player.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
And apparently people are asking for Apple to remove hardware that we sometimes use from our desktops but leave the prices the same or even raise them. And of course, the cheerleaders will rationalize such decisions by encouraging us to buy external hardware for even more money to get back hardware features that Apple chose to remove.
I'm in the camp that doesn't need an immobile desktop to get slimmer. I don't get much out of who has the skinniest desktop all-in-one. What I do need is for an ALL-in-one to be an all-in-one... not evolve into a less-in-one "but you can attached a bunch of external stuff to cover my 'all' need."
Where does that eventually lead? The new (2016) iMac: one thunderbolt 3 (Apple proprietary) port (to which you can attach an external screen, drives, CPU, GPU, various hubs, etc.) Our thinnest, lightest & smallest iMac ever starting at only $1499. I can already hear the cheerleaders rallying behind a $1500 thunderbolt port rebranded iMac: "wow, the first-ever iMac I can carry in my pocket", "I used to have an iPhone adapter that was bigger than this new iMac", "shut up and take my money", "I'm already in line waiting to buy it", "I've got to be the first guy in my circle to own the 'magical', micro iMac", "do you think the next gen might have retina-etched lettering?" etc.
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Because computers are designed to engage your brain. TV is designed to disengage.
Really lame. Hey Apple I'm not gonna spend more money on your over priced itunes movies when I can get DVDs and Blu Rays way cheaper. Also what the heck am I supposed to do with the discs I have?!
Blu-ray player hooked up to HDTV like everyone else.
Honestly, I have a nice Bluray player hooked up to my nice 50" plasma and I haven't used it in months. I haven't even bought a Bluray movie in months, though I'll probably get a few for Christmas.
Everything I watch is either through my Xbox360 with AmazonPrime movies, or through the AppleTV on Netflix and iTunes.
But that's just me. I'm sure others were really wanting Bluray on their Macs, but I guess it's just not gonna happen.
Everything I watch is either through my Xbox360 with AmazonPrime movies, or through the AppleTV on Netflix and iTunes.
But that's just me. I'm sure others were really wanting Bluray on their Macs, but I guess it's just not gonna happen.
It's just more convenient. I like downloadable movies because space "is" premium and that means I don't have to sit through forced trailers.
Or, he assumes you understand that the direct reasons are what you mentioned, so what he's telling us is why Apple came to the conclusion they did.
What kind of cinephile watches Blu-Rays on a laptop or desktop computer screen?
First, lets recognize that there is in fact an audience who demands a high end cinematic experience at home. But the fact of the matter is that people who demand perfect picture and superior audio are a niche market -- by the very definition of niche -- one that is satisfied and sufficiently met by third parties.
On the other hand, your more mainstream Bob and Jane don't sit there comparing pixels on their 42" LCD. They're happy with being able to have their collection of movies in a neat digital library accessible from home, in the back of the family car and at the cottage.
Macs don't offer optical media at all now. Those who want to watch a Blu-Ray on their 21 or 27 inch screens of an iMac or the 15 or 13 or 11 screens of their MacBook Pros and Airs are a tiny segment of those cinephiles and audiophiles. The fact of the matter is that, a real appreciator will want to watch a Blu-Ray on at least a 47" screen at the very minimum. These people buy high end Blu-Ray players and audio systems; they don't play their movies on their Macs.
What are we leaving out? Content producers? On the cutting edge, movie producers use Mac Pros and we know where that lineup stands now. Indie producers will be satisfied with a MacBookPro or a fully loaded iMac both of which don't have any optical media readers/writers. Final Cut Pro and Compressor support Blu-Ray authoring. For those who really care about content production, they wouldn't be satisfied with a vanilla Blu-Ray writer. They go out and buy a FireWire or Thunderbolt external writer.
Who are we leaving out now? Oh right... MacRumors crybabies who just want it because 'I waaaaaant it"... All 20 of you.
First, lets recognize that there is in fact an audience who demands a high end cinematic experience at home. But the fact of the matter is that people who demand perfect picture and superior audio are a niche market -- by the very definition of niche -- one that is satisfied and sufficiently met by third parties.
On the other hand, your more mainstream Bob and Jane don't sit there comparing pixels on their 42" LCD. They're happy with being able to have their collection of movies in a neat digital library accessible from home, in the back of the family car and at the cottage.
Macs don't offer optical media at all now. Those who want to watch a Blu-Ray on their 21 or 27 inch screens of an iMac or the 15 or 13 or 11 screens of their MacBook Pros and Airs are a tiny segment of those cinephiles and audiophiles. The fact of the matter is that, a real appreciator will want to watch a Blu-Ray on at least a 47" screen at the very minimum. These people buy high end Blu-Ray players and audio systems; they don't play their movies on their Macs.
What are we leaving out? Content producers? On the cutting edge, movie producers use Mac Pros and we know where that lineup stands now. Indie producers will be satisfied with a MacBookPro or a fully loaded iMac both of which don't have any optical media readers/writers. Final Cut Pro and Compressor support Blu-Ray authoring. For those who really care about content production, they wouldn't be satisfied with a vanilla Blu-Ray writer. They go out and buy a FireWire or Thunderbolt external writer.
Who are we leaving out now? Oh right... MacRumors crybabies who just want it because 'I waaaaaant it"... All 20 of you.
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?