The bane of any movie fan - fumbling with a jewel case! I have a large number of movies on Blu-Ray that I've never watched because I can't open the jewel case.
just teasing!
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Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon
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The bane of any movie fan - fumbling with a jewel case! I have a large number of movies on Blu-Ray that I've never watched because I can't open the jewel case.
just teasing!
Thank you. Blu Ray in the Mac is a non issue for me otherwise I would have not bought the new iMac to replace my ugly and unreliable Dell hardware. That is why I have a PS3 and dedicated BD player. This thread is about Steve not shipping his computers with a BD player. I am fine with that and also getting a good laugh from everyone dinging Steve for his choice. Again, like the iPhone 4 song, "don't buy it" if you are unhappy there is no BD player in a Mac. Get a PC ( Dell, HP, etc.). You don't have to buy from Apple. Now that was easy. In the mean time I am going to enjoy my streaming HD Netflix movies and Amazon on Demand with my medium speed broadband connection that I have had no issues with thus far. And I am looking forward to getting my Apple TV's to stream movies to the other displays in my house - sure beats walking from room to room with a disc
The bane of any movie fan - fumbling with a jewel case! I have a large number of movies on Blu-Ray that I've never watched because I can't open the jewel case.
just teasing!
Thanks!
Ok, I acquiese. I guess my understanding has been imperfect. But everything I had read years ago on the topic, say by 2006, said almost nobody (studios) were encoding progressive, they were using interlaced for DVD manufacture. Other than some discs that were a mix of both. Was everything back then wrong, has it changed?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.
Bandwidth cost is going down faster than movie file sizes are growing. So eventually streaming/downloading will be a good choise for majority of movie watchers. Maybe it takes only one decade to get there.
Other thing is how using the digital version is restricted.
You can watch bd-movie with any bd-player, loan it to your friend and even sell it again. None of these you can currently do with most of digital downloads.
I don't now were you got the idea with blockbuster being dead from because its completely wrong.
Here in Europe e.g denmark were I live blockbuster is still the way to go because a: most people use a pc not a mac b: apple hasn't got a movie store in itunes and it's the same situation in most parts of europe
Ps written on iPod touch don't kill me for grammar.
I'm trying it and it's not easy. These crappy laptops with crappy os are making me unhappy even when they do have bd.
Maybe this is just nostalgy, but a few years ago macs used to be state of the art. Top quality and all features available. Then they started taking away features like ports and when the rest of the industry kept gaining new things, macs did not.
All I want is good os & bd & matte screen & preferably some expandability. Not so easy these days...
Don't worry. Download speeds are increasing, becoming less expensive, and the infrastructure required to deliver them are pretty ubiquitous in all but the most remote areas of the U.S. with the odd exception. Many other developed nations have access to even faster and less expensive broadband.
If it typically takes 5MB/sec download speeds to deliver 720p films instantly over the Internet (per Netflix), 1080p cannot be far off.
i guess i should read. sorry.
it all depends on the bitrate of the file though, it could indeed be 5MB/s!
that article kind of beat around the bush - at least it told us the prices have dropped
At the risk of going far off tangent, let some of your fellow forum members help you. I'll make the first attempt, though it would help more if I knew exactly your primary use for your computer.
You mentioned looking at laptops. The 15" and 17" both offer matte screens as an option. In November, Intel is set to begin supporting PCI Express natively, meaning it should be simple adding USB 3.0 to the next 17" MBPs (likely set to be released sometime in the next 50 days or so) unless Apple upgrades the USB ports to 3.0, in which case, it becomes moot.
The one area where Apple cannot satisfy you currently is your desire for Blu-Ray films from Hollywood. While Apple is a member of the Blu-Ray Disk Association that helped develop the format, CEO Steve Jobs has stated the royalties involved with Blu-Ray are a nightmare and not a cost he wishes to pass on to consumers. Until then, your choices are either to get an external Blu-Ray player for your laptop and rip the film, purchase Blu-Ray films that come with a digital copy (as done by 20th Century Fox), or forgo Blu-Ray and rent/buy 720p digital copies until Blu-Ray becomes so popular that Apple decides the public demands Blu-Ray. As I've stated previously, Blu-Ray accounts for less than 11% of all movies purchased. Should that share rise, I'm sure Apple will begin offering them as an option.
I really have to wonder how much difference exists between a 720p and 1080p film on a 17" screen or less unless you are outputting to a large TV. If you are outputting to a TV on a regular basis, you are likely better off picking up a dedicated Blu-Ray player, some of which are below $100.
As for expandability and being future-proof, I believe you are far better off with a Mac Pro. I have a 12 year old PowerMac running Leopard quite capably. It also has USB 2.0 and Firewire 800 ports, neither of which existed when it was made. If I wanted, I could easily upgrade the processor by nearly 400%. Remember that all the cores in the world won't matter as much as when an application is written specifically to be multi-core aware. Also, the Mac Pro will allow you to hunt for the matte screen you want, as opposed to an iMac that would force you to find an aftermarket solution. Truth be told, however, I would wait for Lightpeak before dropping any major coin. It should begin appearing sometime in 2012 or possibly even 2011 with some luck.
I hope this helps. Good luck.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that in Finland, Blu-Ray is cost effective. However, in the U.S., some cursory examination of Blu-Ray versus traditional SATA drives on a cost per GB basis shows Blu-Ray to still be more expensive. The 25GB Blu-Ray disks are more expensive than SATAs but close. Meanwhile, the 50GB Blu-Rays disks are dramatically more expensive than SATA drives from a per GB standpoint.
I believe Blu-Ray is a victim of SSDs pushing the price of SATA drives so low. Hopefully, prices on Blu-Ray media can continue dropping in price and at a faster pace than SATAs that one day they will become cost effective for everyone and just not a small niche with select backup criteria.
Like any press release, and with all due respect to my fellow Minnesotans that put it out, please take it with a grain of salt.
SATA drives can't compete with BD on:
"For them Blu-ray Discs - which now come with a reliable archiving guarantee of up to 50 years - become an attractive alternative."
http://news.creativecow.net/story/864679
http://news.creativecow.net/story/864679
Your rotating disks will fail.
I got that silly idea from "economics." Look into it. Or check out the graph:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BLOKA.PK+Interactive#chart1:symbol=bloka.pk;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
Used to be a good investment - now it's a delisted over-the-counter penny stock.
G.
Update: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/23/blockbuster-files-chapter-bankruptcy/?test=latestnews
Even when the infrastructre in place the ISPs are moving to restrict this, pushing against net-neutrality and capping bandwidth. I have Comcast, my bandwidth is capped at 250gb and I often come close to it WITHOUT downloading HD movies.
Thanks for looking. If you ever stumble upon it again feel free to PM the link to me.
PsF is just a way to carry a progressive image in an interlaced stream. The image was recorded progressive and can be displaced progressive. Both fields in the PsF frame were captured in the same moment of time by the camera and will be displayed in the same moment of time on a progressive display. Using the interlaced stream as a carrier makes it compatible with existing, interlaced-based infrastructures but it does not degrade the equality.
While interlace devices (both recording and monitoring) can be more susceptible to aliasing like that it can happen in the progressive world as well. Once you start getting close to the upper limits of what a camera can resolve you'll start to get aliasing (like a moiré pattern) which is why cameras use optical low pass filters in front of the sensors to perform a small blur on high frequency detail to help avoid aliasing. DSLRs are notorious for this kind of aliasing while shooting video in part because the optical low pass filters in those cameras are not optimized for use with HD video.
I don't know enough to be able to say who used what when. It has been my understanding though that using 24p was common because, compared to encoding everything as 29.97 NTSC, it provided a simpler workflow that yielded better results (fewer frames per second means not having to use as much compression over a given amount of time).
Lethal
It can degrade. Depends on source.
There's no single answer.
If the source is already softened to avoid interlace twitter, effective resolution does not degrade.
If the source and master are done only for progressive displays, higher effective resolution than what is possible with 1080i, is possible.
This is all of coure very OT and pretty hair-splitting,
but there can be huge differences in effective resolution in material which is all called "1080p".
Starting from sensor, most "1080"-sensors have been made for 1080i. They have huge optical anti-aliasing (or low-pass filtering) and pixels (or rows) are combined for readout. (First field is made out of rows 1,2,3 & 5,6,7 and second field from rows 2,3,4 & 7,8,9 etc.) This is why many sony cameras loose sensitivity when readout is changed to progressive; lines are not read twice.
Then recording format limits. Hdcam & dvcpro has only 1440 horizontal pixels and way less chroma resolution. Pixels are of course resampled to 1920.
And of course physical sampling limits; nyquist & kell.
Also most screens are "fullHD", but they have overscan, so the picture is resampled once again.
You cold have something like real effective (optical) resolution of 1000x700 with "1080p"-material and have done nothing wrong.
On the other end, you could have 2k or 4k scan or oversampled sensor and oversampled (for fullHD) recording. With right workflow and screen you could have real optical fullHD resolution (or maybe just have to substract 0.9 Kell factor).
That's almost triple the resolution!
So if movie vault has interest giving out only highest possible quality and also have in mind dci release and does not want to do the whole restoration process again when next super-duper distribution format is released (twice a decade small upgrade, once a decade big overhaul), they really have to think what to do.
Thanks for the try, but seems to be that there's no ease for my pain.
MBP's used to be near perfect. Now it doesn't look like that anymore.
Maybe new battery and unibody construction just takes too much space. Maybe liquidmetal chassis will make things better. Who knows?
Now that 15" has hi-rez option in matte it would be quite perfect size. Handy to use on the road, but still enough real estate in desktop to work as a secondary monitor with bigger display at home.
But since it now lacks BOTH express card AND all improvements computers have had in past 5 years (eSata, usb3, bd), they are too far away from perfect.
I also wouldn't bet that chipset's support would mean anything for MBP's connectors. For example chipsets has had native support fo eSata for years.
Also it would have been easy to put usb3 chip already in last gen MBPs, but no. Funny now, that even intel's new reference boards have additional usb3 chip...
My use for the laptop would include all that average Joe's doing plus FCS & CS5. I'm just a poor media worker in a small economic area with too many people like me. Finland screwed up the amount of people educated to media field over a decade ago (goverment thought that digitalization will make money out of nowhere) and now we have so huge surplus that people will work in this field for free. So I have to think very carefully what to purchase. 17" with applecare costs about same than 5 minis, so...
I don't believe anymore that bd share has anything to do with apple's decisions. Dvd share was way lower when it was included in mac ecosystem.
Apple could consider bd when their mac sales start to loose share in overall market, but then again they make bigger profits from iGadgets, so they could just leave macs behind.
I have to travel for my work a bit, so I would take external bd with me only when I would know I would need it for the work. Internal would be needed for casual leisure time.
Visual perception is about the angle of view, not the physical size of screen.
I have the oldest and slowest MP and I'm very happy with it. Next I'm going to triple its cpu power by upgrading the cpu's. They are pretty cheap now. Then maybe more ram. With 64bit apps 8GB isn't always enough. At least when I have Mail and couple of browsers open with FCS & CS5. Also I could replace my (flashed pc version of) x1950 to something more efficient, when apps start use use more gpu power.
I wouldn't even think about new MP models. Way too overpriced and worst memory architecture on the market.
All things being equal, should you find a safe place to keep your backup that it won't be exposed to a strong magnet (hard drive) or something sharp (Blu-Ray disk), I believe both are adequate for a decade or so. All data is going to have be shifted onto another medium at some point sooner than 50 years as formats are replaced; for instance, good luck retrieving those backups from floppies and Zip disks. If you buy a new hard drive specifically for backing up your data and then disconnect and store it, the likelihood of it failing is rather remote. Even if the drive fails, any major city has numerous data retrieval companies.
Sorry nothing seems to be a perfect fit for you. Have you tried contacting Apple? Believe it or not, I have actually had a call back from the HQ when I made a general complaint, and I cannot say I have any type of clout with them.
I live in Minnesota (USA) where we have a large portion of the publishing industry in the country. We also have one of the largest and most active graphic design and media workers associations outside New York, New York. Several of my friends work for companies in these fields for two decades or desktop publishing's infancy. I cannot say any of them purchase the latest and greatest Apple products. When I ask them why they have not updated yet, they say they don't see the cost/time benefit. None use Blu-Ray or have Blu-Ray in their design houses. They say that, while the occasional job arises that would necessitate Blu-Ray, they are not abundant enough that upgrading their machines is worth it. Their client list includes many Fortune 500 companies.
I am curious as to what USB 3.0 devices you find so compelling. The first devices only came out early this year, and, so far, I have seen nothing that has made me want to run out and upgrade. I added eSATA to my MBP but found Firewire 800 much less persnickety and not that much slower, which is funny considering eSATA is supposed to be the end all, be all. Also, I notice that, as a percentage of the devices on sale on the market today, USB 2.0 still seems to dominate, though I'm guessing that USB 3.0 will start to dominate sometime later next year.
I agree that Apple, at one time, was interested in putting out the undisputed powerhouses of computers, especially when it came to their towers during the MHz War. More power meant less time waiting for a photoshop filter to process.
Now that even the most basic of computers have incredible powers, minitowers have become less necessary. As you may have noticed, go into many places doing media creation and scientific research, those Power Macs have been largely replaced by iMacs. I see it at many design houses and in many science labs. Ten years ago, that would have been unthinkable, as the iMac was positioned as a consumer level product. I, too, have talked many people out of Mac Pros and not had one person come back to me with regret. I would still push someone wanting a Mac and doing hardcore video compression to go Mac Pro, but that's an exception. Even then, their computing power needs would need to be on an extraordinary scale.
I remember back in the 90's, when Apple products were obtained almost exclusively from mail catalogs (i.e. ClubMac, MacConnection, etc), university bookstores, and the rare, independent Apple dealer. Your typical Apple users were mainly students, lawyers, scientists and media creation professionals. Today, Apple's iPods, iPhones and iPads have created a halo effect that draws over 5 million people into their stores each week. They have never sold more computers in their history than they are doing now. As Macs have become more mainstream again, they have taken steps to position their products to larger audiences while maintaining their core philosophies (ease of use, polished UI, etc). Go into any Apple Store, and you will see a diverse group of clientele. Amazingly, Apple still has much love among the users on the finge; just look at the rare photos of people attending Def Con, and you will see many Macs. Considering Apple has over 90% of the > $1000 computer market, I'd say they are on to something with their approach.
As for the architecture and your media creation needs, have you posed your question in a thread about the new Mac Pro architecture? If you are using many of Apple's media creation suites, I would guess that they are designed to take advantage of the multi-cores in their Mac Pros. It is hard to imagine that Apple would neglect such a large, lucrative segment of buyers. You may also wish to pose your question over in the forums at MacTech, which probably has a larger proportion of true tech heads. Wherever you decide to post your quarry, be leery of threads comprised of large groups of zealots (pro-Apple, anti-Apple, or otherwise). Good luck.
Yeah, data retrieval off a failed hard drive, just so you can save pennies on the dollar on the current price of BD-R media.
And no, hard drives are not reliable backup media. They are prone to failure much more than optical or magnetic tape media. You don't backup important data to a hard drive, and data retrieval is not an exact science that works 100% flawlessly off failed hard drives.
Yeah, data retrieval off a failed hard drive, just so you can save pennies on the dollar on the current price of BD-R media.
And no, hard drives are not reliable backup media. They are prone to failure much more than optical or magnetic tape media. You don't backup important data to a hard drive, and data retrieval is not an exact science that works 100% flawlessly off failed hard drives.
I do not think he is getting it that hard drives are not consider good long term back-ups.
A good set up I know one IT guy runs for his deparment are RAID 6 arrays that have a hot swap spare so it would take a total of 3 drive failures in a short span of time for him to be in trouble. Short span being that they fail in the server between when he leaves one day to go home and come in the next.
Now his entire massive array system is back up nightly I believe on to a tap drive and every Monday he changes out the taps and take the other one home with him for off site storage. Next Monday he puts the other one on.
So god for bid he has one of his arrays crash and burn on him the worse case data loss is around 24 hours. Fire burns the place down it is 1 week max data loss.
Now the super critical stuff is back up every day one some off site server space he had the department buy for him.
Just going to show an example of the correct way to do back ups.
The bigger the array the more critical it is to have hot swap spares.
Yeah, data retrieval off a failed hard drive, just so you can save pennies on the dollar on the current price of BD-R media.
And no, hard drives are not reliable backup media. They are prone to failure much more than optical or magnetic tape media. You don't backup important data to a hard drive, and data retrieval is not an exact science that works 100% flawlessly off failed hard drives.
I'm not talking enterprise level. I'm talking about Joe & Jane Average backing up their Quicken files for a few years and a backup of their large iPhoto library and home movies. Even then, I would suggest a secondary, cloud-based backup in case they have a fire. As far as I know, Blu-Ray is not flame-retardant. I submit the old adage that the only perfect backup solution is a redundant one stored several places.
I'm not sure how 20 50GB (i.e. 1GB) Blu-Ray disks at $120 compared to a 1GB SATA drive at $50 translate to pennies on the dollar? If you like, I'll even ignore the cost of purchasing a Blu-Ray drive for argument sake. Let's also be honest that I'm being generous giving the average price of a 50GB disk at $6.
Again, I am trying to not deviate too much from the general spirit of this thread which is directed at the consumer level.
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