Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon

[mBox]

Wow this thread is long
Id like to add my experiences.
We've had the LaCie Blu-Ray burner for a few years now.
Ive burned a dozen BD-25s for training videos and the occasional external video for Broadcast. Ive done 2 back-up data style discs.
Now with Toast and this burner Ive also burned over 100 BD on DVD which btw is not really BD. Its some lower version of BD almost at 12megabit.
cant go higher due to the DVD size and format.
So my take on having BD on the Mac.
If its built in, cool.
If not, well you can always buy an external.
As far as watching movies, I havent had any reason to.
I work with Motion/3D/NLE/DAW, my PS3 at home does the movie playing for me
I hope that doesnt ruffle any feathers out there.

 

[LethalWolfe]

No DVDs are 24p, unless you burned a couple yourself. They are all NTSC in 480i60 format. (other countries are 525i50 PAL, but still not 24p) Otherwise they wouldn't play on your SDTV with simple composite connections.

Incorrect and, like I said, the DVD player can handle the conversion from 24p to 60i on the fly.


Lethal

 

[kingtj]

Yeah, I think so ....

I don't have any "inside information" or anything, so my guess isn't worth anything special .... but IMHO, yes - you'll get "more bang for the buck" with next year's Mac Pro revision than with the current one.

It just looked to me like this latest update was pushed out the door just for the sake of the machine getting a refresh. It offers better CPUs and more configuration options (can go up to a 12 core setup if you pay the $$$'s for it) -- but otherwise, nothing really groundbreaking.

Apple does this from time to time with all of their product lines. Once in a while, they'll decide to just do a small "bump" for a given model year, vs. putting in the R&D and QA testing required to do a major revision.

Currently, except for the minority who run special applications that actually make real efficient use of all the available processor cores, I think one of the best values in a Mac Pro is still their 2008 version. It seemed to me to be the "sweet spot" at giving power users a nice, expandable tower system with 8 Xeon processor cores at a fair price. You could get a good deal on a used one right now, spend a little money to drop the latest Radeon video card in it, and boom -- very nice OS X machine.

I'm not sure what you mean about fixing their price on the single-chip version? Ever since the PowerMac G5 was first released, the Mac towers with only 1 chip have never really been the "best value" anyway. Sure, they have the lowest price -- but you're typically stuck with a motherboard that won't even accept a second CPU down the road, if you wanted to upgrade. Plus, if you're not doing tasks that would make use of the 2nd. CPU and cores, you probably could have just gone with a high-end iMac and been fine. (Just add a network based storage device or even USB external enclosure for more hard drive capacity.) Usually, at this point, someone points out the fact they "want to use an existing display". Fine, but how much is that display worth vs. the cost savings between a Mac Pro tower and the iMac? Might be better off to just resell that display .....

Do you really think that next year MP's will be more cost effective?
Will they finally fix memory bank issue and price for single chip version?

 

[JAT]

Incorrect and, like I said, the DVD player can handle the conversion from 24p to 60i on the fly.


Lethal

Not incorrect. DVD is NTSC in the USA. What are you talking about? Are you talking about Blurays, aka "BD"?

 

[OllyW]

Not incorrect. DVD is NTSC in the USA. What are you talking about? Are you talking about Blurays, aka "BD"?

LethalWolfe is correct, DVD does support 24p.

Although many resolutions and formats are supported, most consumer DVDs use either 4:3 or anamorphic 16:9 aspect ratio MPEG-2 video, stored at a resolution of 720/704×480 (NTSC) or 720/704×576 (PAL) at 29.97, 25, or 23.976 FPS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#DVD-Video

DVDs, however, are capable of storing the native 24p frames. Every Hollywood movie is laid to disc as a 24p (actually 23.976p – see below) stream. With a progressive-scan DVD player and a progressive display, such as an HDTV, only the progressive frames are displayed and there is no conversion to an interlaced format – eliminating the appearance of any interlace or de-interlacing artifacts. When displayed on a standard NTSC TV (which only display 60i) the DVD player will add 3:2 pulldown to the signal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p#24p_on_DVD

 

[JAT]

This has been hashed and rehashed for 13 years. Your interpretation is inaccurate, Wikipedia is stating the case for a 24p DVD, if they existed, but there are none, it is not stating that your copy of Star Wars on DVD is stored in 24p format. Even CD can have 108024p video on it, that doesn't mean anybody made a commercial CD containing any.

It is stored as 480i on (let's say "virtually all" in case there is one somewhere) all commercial DVDs, and old standard players play it directly. Progressive players use flags embedded in the stream to pull back to progressive.

Here is a quote about reality from the page you linked, just a couple paragraphs up:

To record 24p material onto a 60i format (i.e. any NTSC-based format), pulldown is typically added to 'pad' the 24 frames into 60 fields. This is done by taking every frame and splitting it into two fields. Then, every second frame has one of its fields duplicated, resulting in three fields. The fields are then played back in that pattern – 2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3 … and so on. The resulting video becomes a 60i stream and can be displayed on NTSC monitors. However, the aesthetic of 24p motion is retained and the footage does not have the motion of typical 60i video.

 

[xbjllb]

What a pile of cat dung. Blah blah blah. You missed by a mile bozo... because you ASSumed the teacher was talking about a gun. Think "barrel".

If something so simple eludes you, how can you understand the more technical stuff (like: if you want to watch BD, then buy a BD player... duh).

Oh dear... class warfare at it's most repellent.

I've never even seen THAT kind of barrel in my life outside of dictionary definitions, let alone HEARD one bouncing down the avenue, and in your neck of the woods you still must buy things in them. How in the world did you ever get a computer or internet access?

Like talking to Amish.

My teacher was making reference to William Shakespeare's quote "The empty vessel makes the loudest sound" which is also a reference to Plato's quote "As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers." What this means is people with no brains have a lot to say or that noisy opinionated people are often stupid. I hope that helps.

What would help is accuracy in the first place. Barrel is not an accurate synonym for vessel.

Like I said, lousy teacher. Obama at Harvard.

xbjllb,

Considering your habit of posting, on average, about one post full of piss and vitriol a day since joining this forum, I cannot help but wonder what is your intent.

You seem to really have a boner for Blu-Ray and joined the forums when speculation began to mount that Apple was possibly going to start having Blu-Ray as an option in its drives. When that didn't pan out, did you lose your job as a result? Are you hoping that Steve Jobs reads your posts and reconsiders?

I've posted in the past that there are Blu-Ray options available if you have a Mac. OWC sells them. They are quite inexpensive. Toast makes it a snap to burn a Blu-Ray that can run on any Blu-Ray player.

I'll let history tell you. Talk to me in four, maybe five years.

IF this forum is still here despite Apple's demise.

Remember that gem you posted a few days ago? Even your avatar choices reflect your utter contempt for Apple. Why are you still here? Are you that lonely?

I apologize if I come off as gruff, but all you are adding is noise to what could be a great thread. As for my intentions, it is to have a serious conversation about Blu-Ray and its future on Apple products.

Thanks for the review. Critics are like certain orifices; everyone has one.

Talk to me in two years when Apple craps out against Samsung after entering the TV business and letting the computers devolve even further.

Me? I'm looking forward to the COMPUTER company that comes along to replace Apple. Anything else is a lost cause. I know, I rode Amiga until the bitter end.

But still I try. If I can wake up just ONE board member.

Public complaining is usually far more effective than private. If you disagree, you have an ignore button.

Steve Jobs certainly does.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Even CD can have 108024p video on it, that doesn't mean anybody made a commercial CD containing any.

Not a good analogy. A CD containing 1080p24 video will not playback when put into a standard CD player because it is not complaint w/audio CD standards. A 24p DVD will playback in a standard DVD player because it is compliant w/DVD video specs.

Here is a quote about reality from the page you linked, just a couple paragraphs up:

And that quote is exactly how a DVD player can take the 24p media on a DVD and turn it into an NTSC compliant signal on the fly.

From a Panasonic FAQ about the DVX100:

4. If I'm not distributing my program on film why should I shoot 24p?

Most prime time television episodic programs are shot in 24p - either 35mm film or HD video - and therefore a very large audience exists that equates the "24p look" with very high production values. In this case the material is most often delivered as a 4:3 aspect ratio presentation, but other 24p based non-film outlets - such as DVD (DVD-R or DVD-RAM) - could be 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen aspect ratios.
.
.
.
24. Is it possible to author a 24p native DVD from DV 24p?

In theory yes it is. At this point in time only a few specialized DVD authoring systems recognize 24p (i.e. 23.976 frames per second) as a valid input signal. Most authoring systems expect to receive an NTSC compatible 60i (i.e. 59.94 fields per second) signal. A 24p sensitive DVD encoder can work 25% more efficiently than with 60i, because it only has to encode 48 fields / 24 frames per second compared to 60 fields / 30 frames per second. For any given Megabit/per second budget, that offers the potential of higher quality DVD encoding. Motion pictures released on DVD are encoded at this lower (24p) frame rate, so a 24p native video DVD (DVD-R / DVD-RAM) should be compatible with the majority of DVD players.

Emphasis mine.

White Paper about how to make a 24p DVD:

One of the best ways to deliver your 24p DV project is on a 24p DVD. Because the DVD specification allows for the 23.98fps frame rate, we can produce a 24p DVD without having to add pulldown. Because a 24p DVD will have 20% less frames on it than the equivalent 24p media encoded with the addition of 3:2 pulldown, a 24p DVD should allow you to compress the media less and either produce a better quality picture or allow you to fit more high quality video on a DVD. The DVD player itself will add 3:2 pulldown on playback of a 24p DVD so that it produces a standard NTSC video signal for viewing.

Another White Paper:

One of the advantages of working on a native 24p project (or 23.976) is the ability to create what is referred to as a “progressive DVD.” DVD has the ability to payback material that is 24p native and insert the 2:3 pulldown for NTSC viewing. This allows for 20% more program to fit on a DVD for the same bit rate, or a higher quality bit rate for the same length program.
The MPEG2 encoding process adds a 2:3 pulldown flag to the frames telling the player how to create the NTSC signal. This allows for very clean still frame advance (no inter-field motion twitter) as well as a smooth playback on either progressive or interlace monitors.

Lethal

 

[linux2mac]

Me? I'm looking forward to the COMPUTER company that comes along to replace Apple. Anything else is a lost cause. I know, I rode Amiga until the bitter end.

As far as getting up to insert a BD disc, my estate server is in a centralized part of the estate (the media room) and I usually ring one of the housekeepers to do that and route it to whichever of the five 80" plasma displays I happen to be at at the time. I rarely see the inside of the media room, unless it's the one off the home theater where I keep the popcorn. I like making my own, unless there are going to be a lot of guests.

I sincerely hope one day we'll all achieve my lifestyle.

Why don't you start the "COMPUTER company that comes along to replace Apple?" From your previous post describing your "lifestyle" it would seem that you have the funds to do that. After all, Steve Jobs started Apple out of his garage on less money than you would appear to have. Unless you were just blowing smoke ( Oh geez, I hope you don't misinterpret that like you did the barrel quote by my teacher - LOL and crying because I am laughing so hard!).

 

[PeterQVenkman]

This whole thread is full of suck.

Bottom line is Apple doesn't give anyone the choice in their products because it conflicts with their new business ventures and media outlets. That's it.

Apple could have pushed the Blu-Ray evolution forward, like they did by introducing the superdrive iMac alongside iDVD all those years ago. But instead they want to micro-transact you to death and lock you into iTunes.

It's a shame so many applaud that.

 

[glashoppah]

Actually, there is a huge parallel between Avatar and Apple. Two run by guys way old enough to know better, however because of momentum from past successes and reliance on the ignorance of their current young target audiences, think they can foist substandard work on them and not get called on it.

Avatar's graphics were abysmal to anyone who didn't grow up on the even worse cartoon graphics of video games. To those folks, wowie zowie. Cartoon videogame graphics on the big screen. Circa Disney 1940.

Just like single-tasking iPads that won't play a friggin' simple flash video because Herr Jobs got mad at Adobe software covering the same bases as Apple's. Or "cutting edge" desktop computers you can't even pop a Blu-ray into and watch without jumping through a myriad of torturous hoops courtesy of der Fuhrer.

And unfortunately there's no Academy of peers in the computer world to spank Jobs the way Avatar got spanked at the Oscars.

And by the time the market does spank Jobs (and it WILL) Apple will have fallen too far to recover. And I don't care how much mad money they've socked up for that rainy day.

Ha! Awesome... *thumbs up*

To me the bottom line is the completely full-of-it argument from Jobs. He says no Blu-ray because optical is so last century - but the brand-new Mac Pro I just received not only has an Apple optical drive, it came with a pile of software CDs. Hmmmmm....

And I already had an LG BD re-writer waiting for it when it came, took me just a few minutes to install it and get it running. No good excuse for Apple to not include this technology. I've been buying Macs since 1984, and one of their hallmarks was always the cutting-edge removable drives that supported the latest technologies - same thing with NeXT. Not anymore.

G.

 

[JAT]

Not a good analogy. A CD containing 1080p24 video will not playback when put into a standard CD player because it is not complaint w/audio CD standards. A 24p DVD will playback in a standard DVD player because it is compliant w/DVD video specs.

Ok, you got me, poor analogy. (although they would play on a DVDp) Moving on...

I just checked all my ripped DVDs on my computer (not that many, not much of a pirate), none are 24p (speaking of the main feature, didn't check every file), per 2 different video apps I happen to have that can tell me the framerate as stored. I'm talking about reality, not what you can do. That's what I was responding to, a claim that retail DVDs (the discs) are all 24p, when they are not.

I still haven't said anything about players' compliance or abilities, cause that's not what I was commenting about. I really haven't studied whether they can play 24p from a DVD, since there aren't any. I can probably come up with a dozen things that my DVDp can do that I will never try, so it just doesn't matter.

And that quote is exactly how a DVD player can take the 24p media on a DVD and turn it into an NTSC compliant signal on the fly.

That quote I posted is about events that happen well before a retail DVD is made, not what happens when you play one. Most of yours are, too.

 

[glashoppah]

ROFLMAO.

Of course, "everyone" knows rich people get that way by renting videos instead of buying them.

Look. If you can afford to own and have the room to store, you do. If you can't, you rent. No shame in that, unless it's your own.

And my statement is backed up with many market surveys. Many of them private from the very video rental companies you guys work for.

There will never be any cutting edge cachet OR snob appeal for renting or downloads, so give it up before you start right there.

As far as getting up to insert a BD disc, my estate server is in a centralized part of the estate (the media room) and I usually ring one of the housekeepers to do that and route it to whichever of the five 80" plasma displays I happen to be at at the time. I rarely see the inside of the media room, unless it's the one off the home theater where I keep the popcorn. I like making my own, unless there are going to be a lot of guests.

I sincerely hope one day we'll all achieve my lifestyle.

Actually, the folks I know with money would never waste their or their assistants' time ripping discs. They buy things like Kaleidescape with the system pre-loaded with just about every movie you've ever heard of. A friend of mine spent over $200k on one.

..Blockbuster, poised to collapse this fall.

So much for Blu-Rays being compelling enough to run out and rent them over on demand options such as those provided by your cable provider, Xbox, PS3, AppleTV, Amazon's Video On Demand, Walmart, Best Buy, Sears, Kmart, even Blockbuster, and etc, etc.

Blockbuster is dead not because the rental model is toast but because they're maintaining storefronts against a competitor whose store is virtual. They can't possibly keep up.

G.

 

[xbjllb]

Why don't you start the "COMPUTER company that comes along to replace Apple?" From your previous post describing your "lifestyle" it would seem that you have the funds to do that. After all, Steve Jobs started Apple out of his garage on less money than you would appear to have. Unless you were just blowing smoke ( Oh geez, I hope you don't misinterpret that like you did the barrel quote by my teacher - LOL and crying because I am laughing so hard!).

Fantastic idea! Better yet, I'll just buy the computer division off Apple.

I should be able to swing it next year. PLUS I'll be able to get it even cheaper.

Ha! Awesome... *thumbs up*

To me the bottom line is the completely full-of-it argument from Jobs. He says no Blu-ray because optical is so last century - but the brand-new Mac Pro I just received not only has an Apple optical drive, it came with a pile of software CDs. Hmmmmm....

And I already had an LG BD re-writer waiting for it when it came, took me just a few minutes to install it and get it running. No good excuse for Apple to not include this technology. I've been buying Macs since 1984, and one of their hallmarks was always the cutting-edge removable drives that supported the latest technologies - same thing with NeXT. Not anymore.

G.

Thanks! One for the guys with brains.

 

[LethalWolfe]

I just checked all my ripped DVDs on my computer (not that many, not much of a pirate), none are 24p (speaking of the main feature, didn't check every file), per 2 different video apps I happen to have that can tell me the framerate as stored. I'm talking about reality, not what you can do. That's what I was responding to, a claim that retail DVDs (the discs) are all 24p, when they are not.

I never said all retail DVDs were 24p. I said they are typically 24p which is true. You said that no retail DVDs are 24p which is false. You also said that DVDs can't be 24p because then they wouldn't be playable on an NTSC TV which is also false.

I'll see your anecdotal evidence and raise it with my own. I used Fair Mount and MPEG Streamclip to check 4 random DVDs (Snatch, Superbad, Inglorious Bastards and The House w/Laughing Windows) and they were all 24p except for the old Italian horror movie (no surprise there). Are you sure you didn't change the frame rate when you ripped your DVDs?

I guess since our anecdotal tests seemed to have cancelled each other out all we have left are the facts.

I really haven't studied whether they can play 24p from a DVD, since there aren't any. I can probably come up with a dozen things that my DVDp can do that I will never try, so it just doesn't matter.

Why do you need to study anything when 24p is part of the DVD video spec?


Lethal

 

[linux2mac]

Blockbuster is dead not because the rental model is toast but because they're maintaining storefronts against a competitor whose store is virtual. They can't possibly keep up.

G.

I'll take a 720P streaming movie any day over having to fumble around with jewel cases and insert/eject media every time I want to watch a movie. If its not delivered to my door or if I can't flip through a library of movies on screen I don't want to watch it!

 

[Crunch]

Blockbuster will go the way of Tower Records, as high bandwidth is becoming more and more ubiquitous. They won't be missed.

 

[toke lahti]

Why do you need to study anything when 24p is part of the DVD video spec?

Sorry, I couldn't find the article. Another hour waisted...
But technical explanation is quite simple.

Dvd can be progressive, but no 1080-rez video tape is progressive. All 1080-rez is PsF. One field after another is read/written on tape. This is because there has been no 1080p standard for transferring the signal.
In dvd a frame from progressive source can be compressed as one frame or two fields. Spatially there's no difference.
The difference is that from progressive output, the frame can be displayed without low-pass filtering and therefore the picture is sharper. The same frame can also be outputted as interlaced signal and then it is blurred, because it is lowpass filtered to avoid interlaced display's interline twitter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace#Interline_twitter
VCRs have only one signal output. So you have to be able to watch that signal with interlaced display, so it has to be blurred to avoid interline twitter. If there's no lowpass filtering, you can't broadcast it.
If the fields are from progressive source, you can say it is 24/25/30p, but it does not have the same effective resolution than "real" 24p.

 

[leroypants]

I'll take a 720P streaming movie any day over having to fumble around with jewel cases and insert/eject media every time I want to watch a movie. If its not delivered to my door or if I can't flip through a library of movies on screen I don't want to watch it!

I feel the same way, I just ignore the bed sores and use the couch as a toilet. Luckily my mom will deliver food to my couch. I mean getting up opening a case and pressing eject on a player is way more exercise that i could ever handle.

 

[linux2mac]

I feel the same way, I just ignore the bed sores and use the couch as a toilet. Luckily my mom will deliver food to my couch. I mean getting up opening a case and pressing eject on a player is way more exercise that i could ever handle.

You are missing the point (not as bad as that other one that couldn't figure out what a "barrel" is in my previous posts). Media is old school. I install operating systems and programs via downloads or network installs. I rarely have to use media. So why use media for movie watching? I just got rid of my DVD collection after ripping them to NAS's. I enjoy not seeing a wall of DVD's in my home theater. In sum, not having a BD player on my Mac is a non issue. If I really wanted a BD player for my Mac, I would call OWC.

 

[glashoppah]

You are missing the point (not as bad as that other one that couldn't figure out what a "barrel" is in my previous posts). Media is old school. I install operating systems and programs via downloads or network installs. I rarely have to use media. So why use media for movie watching? I just got rid of my DVD collection after ripping them to NAS's. I enjoy not seeing a wall of DVD's in my home theater. In sum, not having a BD player on my Mac is a non issue. If I really wanted a BD player for my Mac, I would call OWC.

A common attitude, but one that totally ignores the reality of the Internet experience for a great number of the world's population, and a not-insignificant number of the U.S. population. There are a lot of people still on bandwidth-limited connections who can't simply stream HD or download OS updates.

G.

 

[leroypants]

A common attitude, but one that totally ignores the reality of the Internet experience for a great number of the world's population, and a not-insignificant number of the U.S. population. There are a lot of people still on bandwidth-limited connections who can't simply stream HD or download OS updates.

G.

It also completely ignores visual and audio quality of the film.

 

[xbjllb]

I feel the same way, I just ignore the bed sores and use the couch as a toilet. Luckily my mom will deliver food to my couch. I mean getting up opening a case and pressing eject on a player is way more exercise that i could ever handle.

Touche!

You are missing the point (not as bad as that other one that couldn't figure out what a "barrel" is in my previous posts). Media is old school. I install operating systems and programs via downloads or network installs. I rarely have to use media. So why use media for movie watching? I just got rid of my DVD collection after ripping them to NAS's. I enjoy not seeing a wall of DVD's in my home theater. In sum, not having a BD player on my Mac is a non issue. If I really wanted a BD player for my Mac, I would call OWC.

A common attitude, but one that totally ignores the reality of the Internet experience for a great number of the world's population, and a not-insignificant number of the U.S. population. There are a lot of people still on bandwidth-limited connections who can't simply stream HD or download OS updates.

G.

It also completely ignores visual and audio quality of the film.

Guys, thanks for trying, but logic just doesn't fly with the Jobs crowd. HE has a problem with it, so that overrules the hundreds of millions of Apple users who need and use it every day, jumping through ridiculous and highly annoying hoops to do so.

 

[toke lahti]

Media is old school. I install operating systems and programs via downloads or network installs. I rarely have to use media. So why use media for movie watching?

Why use media?
Simple because it's most cost effective and fastest way for majority.

http://www.asymco.com/2010/09/09/it-takes-nearly-1-billionyr-to-run-itunes/

Monthly income from iTunes: $80M, expenses: $75M.
Bandwidth costs for movies are about 500x compared to music or apps.
I'd guess short term goal for Apple is to get people used to download/stream movies / tv programs, even if Apple now makes loss out of it. After couple of years they will have large user base and bandwidth costs have gone down. Then the money machine starts.

If I really wanted a BD player for my Mac, I would call OWC.

And if you have other than MP, they would answer no avail:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&Ne=5000&N=6875&Ntt=Blu-Ray

 

[alent1234]

Why use media?
Simple because it's most cost effective and fastest way for majority.

http://www.asymco.com/2010/09/09/it-takes-nearly-1-billionyr-to-run-itunes/

Monthly income from iTunes: $80M, expenses: $75M.
Bandwidth costs for movies are about 500x compared to music or apps.
I'd guess short term goal for Apple is to get people used to download/stream movies / tv programs, even if Apple now makes loss out of it. After couple of years they will have large user base and bandwidth costs have gone down. Then the money machine starts.


And if you have other than MP, they would answer no avail:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&Ne=5000&N=6875&Ntt=Blu-Ray

except file sizes are always going up for movies. 10 years ago it was DVD quality, now it's HD with some online stores offering 1080p streaming. blu ray XL is coming soon and in a few years file sizes will go up again