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

[boxster99t]

I suggest you to pick up AnyDVD HD and use AnotherEAC3toGUI under VMWare/Parallels:

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17002

That will create you a 1:1 MKV copy of the original movie, including lossless Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD decoded as FLAC (something that MakeMKV still doesn't do).

Interesting assertion. MakeMKV repackages the Bluray structure and doesn't change anything. The audio tracks are all there. If your point was the decoding audio tracks as FLAC part, if that is somehow desireable (I don't understand why one needs to decode audio tracks as FLAC) when backing up Blurays, oh well.

I also don't know why you would run Any DVD HD in VMWare/Parallels, but to each his own. Video encoding is processor intensive, and you'd use less resources running Windows 7 (or prior) natively under bootcamp rather than emulating using VMWare/Parallels in OS X.

When I make backups of my blurays, the only thing I have to do in Windows (if I want to burn a copy of just the main title/with English subtitles to BD-R) is use ImgBurn to burn it. And that's because ImgBurn is open source freeware--I don't know of anything that can burn a bluray under OS X that's readable by a set top bluray player, other than Toast. If one wants to pay for software, the combination of MakeMKV and Toast would let you copy and burn under OS X.

I don't begrudge software developers from making money, but the price of AnyDVD is a lot of money to spend for what it does vs. open source alternatives.

Plus which, when I tried the evaluation copy of AnyDVD HD two weeks ago, it could not rip the one bluray I threw at it (I cannot recall if it was Inception, Due Date or Unstoppable), and said I had to pay for AnyDVD HD to get the latest updates--sort of defeats the purpose of a free trial.

 

[mpaul]

For now, I think I don't need those new audio formats, since I don't have hardware to enjoy them. For that I need to spend couple of thousands to renew sound system and right now that's pretty far in purchase queue.
And I'm not convinced that these audio formats add much value with headphone or laptop use.

Also, I really hate how much I have to pay more for the software & hardware to playback bd-movie with a mac than with a windows machine.
And like I have said before, I don't like Windows and hate to pay "Apple tax" to the Microsoft. This thing seems to change, since Apple's way of limiting of usage of its products is starting to even these companies in my mind.

But back to my question: can you rip bd movie with MakeMKV in OsX, or do you need Windows for that?

From my experience, AnyDVD HD combined with AnotherEAC3To GUI is probably the most working solution to make MKV's. While MakeMKV is good, sometimes it doesn't have the necessary AACS key of a certain movie.
You don't have to go through the whole Bootcamp route, if you don't want to. VMWare will handle everything without a glitch (though, it depends on the amount of RAM you have).
I know that having to deal with Microsoft can be frustrating, and i understand your points about the Microsoft "Apple Tax" and their way of limiting their products. But unfortunately, this is what is all about Apple. Unless we stop buying their products (as i did), there's nothing we can do to change this.

 

[mpaul]

Interesting assertion. MakeMKV repackages the Bluray structure and doesn't change anything. The audio tracks are all there. If your point was the decoding audio tracks as FLAC part, if that is somehow desireable (I don't understand why one needs to decode audio tracks as FLAC) when backing up Blurays, oh well.

I also don't know why you would run Any DVD HD in VMWare/Parallels, but to each his own. Video encoding is processor intensive, and you'd use less resources running Windows 7 (or prior) natively under bootcamp rather than emulating using VMWare/Parallels in OS X.

When I make backups of my blurays, the only thing I have to do in Windows (if I want to burn a copy of just the main title/with English subtitles to BD-R) is use ImgBurn to burn it. And that's because ImgBurn is open source freeware--I don't know of anything that can burn a bluray under OS X that's readable by a set top bluray player, other than Toast. If one wants to pay for software, the combination of MakeMKV and Toast would let you copy and burn under OS X.

I don't begrudge software developers from making money, but the price of AnyDVD is a lot of money to spend for what it does vs. open source alternatives.

Plus which, when I tried the evaluation copy of AnyDVD HD two weeks ago, it could not rip the one bluray I threw at it (I cannot recall if it was Inception, Due Date or Unstoppable), and said I had to pay for AnyDVD HD to get the latest updates--sort of defeats the purpose of a free trial.

The point of decoding HD Audio to FLAC is to be able to play it back on a non-HD capable amplifier/receiver (kill the DRM, so to speak )
I always used AnyDVD for backing up/play US region coded DVD's, as well as rip/convert my Blu-Ray's. Never had any problems with it. Same as with any DVDFab products.
I know there are open source alternatives out there. But once you try a program that will do what you need, without any hassle, it's difficult to change it.

 

[Roy G Biv]

I know the real reason Steve doesn't want Blu-ray on the mac: it's so he can launch his own competing service in October, 2011-- Boo-ray!

 

[xbjllb]

No, it's exactly how pirates view it:

I could give two craps about how pirates view anything. Pirates are ******s, they've destroyed pop music, and given enough theft, they will destroy movies as well.

PERIOD.

I've watched almost all the special content on every one of the 200 blu-rays and handful of HD-DVD's in my collection. But then, I'm in the biz and enjoy how movies are made. Even a crappy documentary is better than none.

You gotta admit, he's got a lot to be arrogant about.

No. NOBODY has to agree. Money and worldly success aren't everything, and they can't and won't buy you a second more of life or A life, will they?

 

[CraigEvander]

Aaaaaa come on! Just give me a hard solid reason why this is happening !

 

[princealfie]

I could give two craps about how pirates view anything. Pirates are ******s, they've destroyed pop music, and given enough theft, they will destroy movies as well.

PERIOD.



I've watched almost all the special content on every one of the 200 blu-rays and handful of HD-DVD's in my collection. But then, I'm in the biz and enjoy how movies are made. Even a crappy documentary is better than none.



No. NOBODY has to agree. Money and worldly success aren't everything, and they can't and won't buy you a second more of life or A life, will they?

Actually I think that Hollywood's lack of quality control already destroyed itself. Even Sundance is a corporate sell out.

 

[janstett]

For now, I think I don't need those new audio formats, since I don't have hardware to enjoy them. For that I need to spend couple of thousands to renew sound system and right now that's pretty far in purchase queue.
And I'm not convinced that these audio formats add much value with headphone or laptop use.

Not neccessarily, there are a few solutions.

(1) HDMI receivers are pretty cheap nowadays.
(2) You can get devices that will break out HDMI to analog outputs and do the decoding. That's what I did for my old receiver.
(3) An HTPC can do it with a multichannel analog card that supports protected audio path (PAP).

Anyway, I think you can rip on OSX now with Handbrake, but my preferred ripping method is to make an ISO with AnyDVD on Windows.

+1

Watching movies on any of my Macs including my iMac doesn't appeal to me. I prefer the theater experience of a true home theater with large screen and sound as opposed to sitting at a desk in an office chair in front of a tiny screen.

-1

Many people drive their high end home theaters with a home theater PC (HTPC) and sadly the Mac is just deficient in that area, with its lack of Blu-Ray, HDMI, and mutlichannel audio. Why would you use a PC? Superior processing, interpolation, and scaling; easy ripping and ISO management; easy removal of region code restrictions and those sorts of things; all kinds of DSP (such as Cyberlink TrueTheater technologies) that simply don't exist on set top boxes; constant evolution of new features. Plus it's a one-stop device that plays literally anything and everything -- unless it's a Mac.

I've watched almost all the special content on every one of the 200 blu-rays and handful of HD-DVD's in my collection. But then, I'm in the biz and enjoy how movies are made. Even a crappy documentary is better than none.

The point of that little diddy is not the special content; it's the forced previews for forgettable garbage that will be forgotten in 6 weeks and isn't remotely related to the feature film, MPAA anti-piracy propoganda, etc. Nothing more contemptuous than forcing a paying customer to sit through a 60 second commercial scolding him to not steal something he already paid for. I PAID for this movie, you should be kissing my butt instead of telling me how evil stealing is, SINCE I DIDN'T STEAL IT and most ironically of all pirates won't even see it. I think Disney is the worst offender; I think it was Cop Out I watched this Friday night on Blu-Ray (terrible movie, what the heck happened to Kevin Smith?) and there were seventy five previews on the damned thing.

I don't mind documentaries, I enjoy them. What I hate are forced previews and morality lectures when I pop a disc in. Especially when you're watching an important high profile movie and you're bombarded with forced previews for the latest disposable garbage the studio is pushing at the moment, which will be completely forgotten in six weeks.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Watching movies on any of my Macs including my iMac doesn't appeal to me. I prefer the theater experience of a true home theater with large screen and sound as opposed to sitting at a desk in an office chair in front of a tiny screen.

It sounds like your mac is capable of even less things than I thought.

 

[linux2mac]

-1

Many people drive their high end home theaters with a home theater PC (HTPC) and sadly the Mac is just deficient in that area, with its lack of Blu-Ray, HDMI, and mutlichannel audio. Why would you use a PC? Superior processing, interpolation, and scaling; easy ripping and ISO management; easy removal of region code restrictions and those sorts of things; all kinds of DSP (such as Cyberlink TrueTheater technologies) that simply don't exist on set top boxes; constant evolution of new features. Plus it's a one-stop device that plays literally anything and everything -- unless it's a Mac.

If I ever did decide to use my Mac Mini Server in my theater room I would not be using the optical drive because it doesn't have one. And can you guess why it lacks an optical drive? Could it be that maybe optical drives are old technology? DOH!

It sounds like your mac is capable of even less things than I thought.

Then imagine how much less capable Windows was for me before I switched to Mac. LOL

I'll still take the Mac even without BD support because I could care less about watching movies on my Macs.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Then imagine how much less capable Windows was for me before I switched to Mac. LOL

It sounds like you didn't know how to use windows - hell, I didn't until I took the plunge into the dark side. We've had smooth sailing since switching here. We had a week of pulling our hair out over tiny differences and now we're cruising.

I'll still take the Mac even without BD support because I could care less about watching movies on my Macs.

Really? How much less?

 

[linux2mac]

It sounds like you didn't know how to use windows - hell, I didn't until I took the plunge into the dark side. We've had smooth sailing since switching here. We had a week of pulling our hair out over tiny differences and now we're cruising.

Hmmmm, let's see. My first gig in IT was at a Fortune 100 Microsoft shop where I was a Microsoft trained applications developer. That combined with my use of Windows since 3.1, you're right, I never knew how to use Windows. Its hard to use something that never worked.

 

[-hh]

Ooops, you probably should Bing for "bd-r inorganic dye" - you'll discover that most BD-R/BD-RE discs use inorganic dyes.

There are some recently released organic dye-based discs (search for "BD-R LTH"). They're cheaper, but generally to be avoided since many home BD and computer BD players can't play them without a firmware upgrade.

Except that you've missed the point, which is that both inorganic and organic dyes are allowed within the BD specifications. This decision ends up putting a footnote disclaimer under their 'Longevity' assurances ("guarentee...only applies to select implimentations of the BD specification, for which we purposefully do not have a distinct category to allow a customer to be able to differentiate between cheap junk and the good stuff that actually might meet our claim, etc, etc, etc...")

That's what's so good in bd, it's not 1st gen tech like ssd or some other newer tech. Disc rot has been long known phenomena, so there's knowledge how to avoid that. Dvd's were affected for layers becoming apart, so that can be also avoided by now.

Unfortunately, BD is knowingly repeating the same "First Generation" mistake made by CD & DVD problem.

The net result is the same as CD/DVD: not all versions of the product are able to meet the longevity claim, and the burden falls upon the consumer to ferret out exactly which brands/models are "good" versus "bad", rather than to simply have the BD standard prevent a known problem.


-hh

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Hmmmm, let's see. My first gig in IT was at a Fortune 100 Microsoft shop where I was a Microsoft trained applications developer. That combined with my use of Windows since 3.1, you're right, I never knew how to use Windows. Its hard to use something that never worked.

I'm trying to understand how someone who claims to have so much experience has so much difficulty when I do not. I don't have anywhere near your experience and have had only minor difficulties related to hitting old combinations of hot keys from Mac OS.

 

[wonderspark]

You keep mentioning your vast IT knowledge of Windows, yet in the same breath, you say it never worked right. It was probably an ID10T issue, and you didn't do your homework. Everyone else has Windows figured out, because if it didn't work, it would be dead, and everyone would have switched to something else by now.

Windows and OSX both work great if you know what you're doing. I don't even have any fancy certifications, yet my Macs and PCs all play very nicely! Normal in my world, yet impossible in yours.

It's easier to blame anything but yourself for your failures, just like it's easier to call Blu-ray a bag of hurt than to admit it's about Apple's profits.

 

[Porco]

If I ever did decide to use my Mac Mini Server in my theater room I would not be using the optical drive because it doesn't have one. And can you guess why it lacks an optical drive? Could it be that maybe optical drives are old technology? DOH!

By that logic everything we are using is 'old technology', it's a daft argument. Sure it's 'old technology' in the same way that the wheels on brand new electric cars are 'ancient technology', but that makes no real point of any value. CPUs are old technology. RAM is old technology. Are you giving those up too?

In terms of the specific form of the technology, Blu-ray is relatively new, just like an i7 is for CPUs. Calling Blu-ray 'old technology' as if that makes some kind of point is like saying the i7 is worthless nowadays because a 68000 wouldn't cut it anymore, and hey, they're both CPUs right?

I think what you really mean is that for distributing movies, optical media is 'old', which would make more sense. However, that doesn't mean it's worse, in fact in terms of the general consumer it's demonstrably better than the 'newer' (at least in terms of widespread take-up) alternative of online distribution until the like of iTunes are selling Blu-ray quality files and the vast majority of people have the internet connections and bandwidth allowances to make it trivial.

Of course you could technically download video before Blu-ray existed, but I wouldn't consider that a fair comparison, just like comparing all optical media ever to the current (and future!) state of the internet. Should we compare Blu-ray to 28k dialup then? Of course not, that would be silly.

 

[AidenShaw]

Any data, or just more F U D against B D ?

Except that you've missed the point, which is that both inorganic and organic dyes are allowed within the BD specifications....

Do you have any data to support your FUD? (In particular, any data to support the idea that a BD optical disc is less robust than a fragile mechanical spinning hard drive?) Why does Verbatim have a lifetime warranty on their LTH (organic) BD-R discs if they are as horrible as you want us to believe?

You also have a glaring logical inconsistency in your FUD rant about BD-R.

You say that early CD-R discs had problems with the organic dyes, but they were fixed. You're assuming that nobody learned anything, and the LTH BD-R discs are equivalent to the 1st gen CD-R discs.

As in most other situations, if you buy cheap crap - you get cheap crap. If you want to archive your digital photographs for your great-grandchildren - don't buy the 500 disc spindle of BD-R discs at Costco for 17¢ per disc.

The net result is the same as CD/DVD: not all versions of the product are able to meet the longevity claim, and the burden falls upon the consumer to ferret out exactly which brands/models are "good" versus "bad", rather than to simply have the BD standard prevent a known problem.

Buy HTL discs, not LTH discs, if you want the best longevity. That's a pretty simple rule for the consumer. The LTH discs may last 25 years or more, but the HTL will probably last longer.

The professionals, as always, will do a little research and check manufacturer's claims for their discs.

...prevent[/B] a known problem.

Is there any bigger problem than the known problem that fragile spinning hard drives *will* fail?

___________________

As an aside for anyone considering issues of archiving on any media (fragile spinning hard drives, CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R), look at the utility named ddrescue.

ddrescue makes a copy (or .ISO) of a disk or disc, initially skipping sectors which produce errors. It will then apply recovery attempts at the bad sectors, keeping a log of all sectors which were not successfully read. Eventually it will either succeed, or fail to make progress. You can try again, specifying the source disc, the output .ISO, and the log file - it will retry just the failed sectors.

The greatest thing about ddrescue, in the context of archives on optical, is that when you retry - you can use a different source disc! If you make two (or more) identical copies of an archive disc, after each pass the log of failed sectors will only have the sectors that were bad in all discs so far scanned. (Note that to ensure that they are truly identical, you should make a .ISO and burn multiple copies of it.)

It's RAID-1 for optical.

 

[Roy G Biv]

Steve Jobs want to announce his own competing format in October-- Boo-ray!

 

[Winnychan213]

Steve Jobs want to announce his own competing format in October-- Boo-ray!

recycle jokes aren't going to save the planet.

 

[nec207]

I don't think any Mac coming out this year or next year will have blu ray? In fact 98% of most PC's do not have blu ray do to the high licence fee.

The licence fee is too high and do not look for blu ray for other 3 or 5 years.There was move 2 or 3 years ago by sony trying to push PC's makers to have blu ray and so many of high in PC's had blu ray but the licence fee was much lower than.

Now it is too high.

 

[wonderspark]

I don't think any Mac coming out this year or next year will have blu ray? In fact 98% of most PC's do not have blu ray do to the high licence fee.

The licence fee is too high and do not look for blu ray for other 3 or 5 years.There was move 2 or 3 years ago by sony trying to push PC's makers to have blu ray and so many of high in PC's had blu ray but the licence fee was much lower than.

Now it is too high.

All Macs and PCs have Blu-ray already. All that's required is installing Windows and an inexpensive burner/player.

 

[theelysium]

External

You can get external Bluray players and burners. I really don't see the big deal here.

Just go get one and stop gripping.

 

[nec207]

Hmmmm, let's see. My first gig in IT was at a Fortune 100 Microsoft shop where I was a Microsoft trained applications developer. That combined with my use of Windows since 3.1, you're right, I never knew how to use Windows. Its hard to use something that never worked.

No windows is easy to use if you use DOS and windows 3.1 !! If you know DOS and can understand the directory tree the understanding of directories and subdirectories you will not get lost in windows.

It just people who never used DOS ,windows 3.1 or understanding of directory tree the understanding of directories and subdirectories get lost.

Windows was built for businesses , IT people and games. Mac was bult for computer novice , graphics , education and multimedia and the young people than old stuffy people.

It just Mac OSx is easer to use for novice or or advance computer user do to well planning of the OS.

Well windows 7 and windows vista through all the logic away how OS works to dump it down for computer novice of having a 7 old and Grandparents that will not go in areas they should not or no training at all on the old logic of DOS ,windows 3.1 or understand directory tree the understanding of directories and subdirectories how a OS works. And slap the windows 7 and windows vista to bring it out ASAP with little to no planning.

And past the screen the kids and Grandparents they should be working in.

 

[nec207]

You can get external Bluray players and burners. I really don't see the big deal here.

Just go get one and stop gripping.

The topic of thread was internal blu ray.

 

[AidenShaw]

No windows is easy to use if you use DOS and windows 3.1 !! If you know DOS and can understand the directory tree the understanding of directories and subdirectories you will not get lost in windows.

It just people who never used DOS ,windows 3.1 or understanding of directory tree the understanding of directories and subdirectories get lost.

Windows was built for businesses , IT people and games. Mac was bult for computer novice , graphics , education and multimedia and the young people than old stuffy people.

It just Mac OSx is easer to use for novice or or advance computer user do to well planning of the OS.

Well windows 7 and windows vista through all the logic away how OS works to dump it down for computer novice of having a 7 old and Grandparents that will not go in areas they should not or no training at all on the old logic of DOS ,windows 3.1 or understand directory tree the understanding of directories and subdirectories how a OS works. And slap the windows 7 and windows vista to bring it out ASAP with little to no planning.

And past the screen the kids and Grandparents they should be working in.

Apple user post of the year!

The topic of thread was internal blu ray.

...and the ability to watch commercial BD movies on your Apple with internal BD.