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

[JAT]

Wow.. are you three married?

Ok, that was hilarious, deserves a quote.

The first of which is the licensing terms for content. This is where the argument against DRM is flawed. The problem with DRM was not DRM it's self, it was that the music industry (RIAA) viewed DRM solely as a way to limit use of downloaded music.

Actually, certain players attempted more than once to kill almost any use of purchaseable media. Sony, mainly.

No, it wouldn't kill them. But might probably hurt iTS movie sales to some degree, because once people are used to BD quality, they won't spend any more money on DVD's or crappy iTunes downloads. At least none of my BD watching friends does anymore.

That certainly applies to me. Never bought/rented any iTunes video of any sort. No plans to.

...like most of the non-participants in this forum, I honestly don't care about Blue Ray and for me it's absolutely fine that Apple doesn't put any BR device in it's machine

"non-participants" ****head explodes****

Didn't want to shuffle through nearly 6,000 posts to see if anyone said this, so if anyone did I apologize in advanced.

One of the reasons why Apple hasn't implemented Blu ray drives into Macs is because nobody (at least as far as I know) requires Blu ray for installing any applications. DVDs still work great and that's why Apple doesn't want to put them in.
If a person really wanted Blu Ray support on their Mac couldn't they buy a $100 external drive and play the discs through VLC?

Oooh, yeah...pretty much all been discussed once or twice. Last summer.

 

[MorphingDragon]

That was a question, not reasoning. Your outlandish claim makes little sense, i.e. that "the internet is a far more popular medium than BluRay, in every possible sense".

I don't think a claim like that which you made deserves much respect, if any - so by asking you to elaborate, I am actually being far more respectable to that silly statement than it deserves.

So how is the "internet a far more popular medium than Blu-ray, in every possible sense" in the context of this thread? It isn't. Thus your claim is utter garbage.

A naive statement would be that there are youtube videos with more views than Avatar has sold BluRay copies. This would be as -hh aptly put it, low hanging fruit.

More formally, The long tail theory says so. As a film becomes more and more obscure, it lessens that chance that it will appear in retailers or even BD.

Consider this graph,

Consider the green shaded area, in media studies this represents the mainstream media. This is the stuff that stores sell, and a majority of this will be blu ray and DVD products with the rest being internet media. Now consider the yellow shaded area, this represents obscure media, stuff that stores wont sell because its not popular or it is simply old. Again, some of this will be blu ray, but it is mostly internet media. Youtube movies, video streaming sites, iTunes etc.

Mathematics say that the area of the two halves would be approximately the same as the only true asymptote is on the x axis. However because internet media is more dominant in the obscure side, which is also continuously growing (Technically towards infinity) faster than mainstream media, the bias goes towards the internet for popularity. There is also a finite point of obscurity at which blu rays are made, furthering the bias. For example, you wont be seeing big buck bunny on BD any time soon.

That article you linked to, only includes mainstream media that is put on BluRay plus its not from a 3rd party so its questionable.

 

[MacBH928]

To add to this... the bandwidth to download these movies. Here in Canada my internet provider (Rogers) is a joke! I pay $50 a month and have a 60 GB monthly bandwidth cap. If I go over it is $2.50/GB. Downloading 1080p movies would eat into that VERY quickly.

I pay $88 canadian for 35GB, be happy with what you have

any way, I want bluray for storage purposes
I believe hard drives die a lot sooner than discs.
Maybe SSDD outlasts the life of a burned bluray?

 

[HiddenGem]

Blu-ray is not future!

 

[iEdd]

Blu-ray is the present.

Sure, the human CentiPad is the future, but Blu-ray is the now.

 

[HiddenGem]

I've be gradually riding myself of all plastic disc based storage media!

The sooner they disappear the better.

Hard discs and solid state is the way to go.

 

[AidenShaw]

I've be gradually riding myself of all plastic disc based storage media!

The sooner they disappear the better.

Hard discs and solid state is the way to go.

What's your strategy for dealing with crashed hard drives when (not if) that happens?

 

[SBlue1]

the same thing that has been around since day one they invented punced cards - backups!

 

[SBlue1]

Apple has there own reasons for not including blu-ray's in there Mac's, and I, just like 80% of the mac userbase - don't really care! - (This is just my way of getting this thread one post closer to the 6000 post milestone ^^)

same here. never understood why people wanted to watch blu ray movies on their macs. dont you guys have nice big full-hd tvs? if i wanna watsch a hd movie i rent one from itunes and watch it on my tv via apple-tv, or if i wanna see 1080p i rent a blu ray and watch it on my tv on my blu ray player.

so what is the problem?

if you just wanna use blu rays for backup or as a storage, you can! so again, what is the problem??

 

[mBox]

same here. never understood why people wanted to watch blu ray movies on their macs...if you just wanna use blu rays for backup or as a storage...:

Could this be the longest thread in MacRumors history? Id like to add that we've had a BD LaCie burner for years now. Not once did we use it for back-up. Why, cause at a pro level 25/50GB is not a back-up. We need TB here maybe as low as 600GB due to high-end video projects.
Below that would be 3D then Web/Print.
Back in the day, CD would have suffice for back-up.
What professional would use a piece of glass for real back-up?

 

[AidenShaw]

The problem is 307Kpixels

if you just wanna use blu rays for backup or as a storage, you can! so again, what is the problem??

If I have a BD movie, why can't I just stick it in my laptop and watch it? Why should I have to buy a second, lower quality copy of the movie to watch it on the laptop or Imac in my dorm room?

DVDs are around 300 Kpixels. BDs (1080p) are 2 Mpixels. Which do you think will look better on a 1 Mpixel screen?

There are also the pros who need to burn and preview BD discs - they can't.

What's the problem with arguing that others shouldn't be able to pay for the option of having BD? I can understand "I don't want BD, I won't pay", but not "I don't want BD, and I don't want you to have the option to pay".

 

[MorphingDragon]

If I have a BD movie, why can't I just stick it in my laptop and watch it? Why should I have to buy a second, lower quality copy of the movie to watch it on the laptop or Imac in my dorm room?

DVDs are around 300 Kpixels. BDs (1080p) are 2 Mpixels. Which do you think will look better on a 1 Mpixel screen?

There are also the pros who need to burn and preview BD discs - they can't.

What's the problem with arguing that others shouldn't be able to pay for the option of having BD? I can understand "I don't want BD, I won't pay", but not "I don't want BD, and I don't want you to have the option to pay".

Dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class, those subhuman DVD users that they are, say the high-class can't have BD. /Sarcasm

 

[-hh]

FWIW, in thinking about this thread a bit more (sorry!), have we really considered the appropriateness to "blame" all of this on only Apple?

Specifically, what I'm getting at is the following question, which on some levels is far more basic:

So why hasn't the 3rd Party aftermarket offered the product (of an OS X based BD player) on their own already?


Failing to answer this basic question is what underlies the debates as to having it bundled in OS X, which has lead to both the "I don't want BD, I won't pay" position, as well as the "I don't want BD, and I don't want your demand for it to cost me more of my money" concern as well.


True, a 3rd Party software solution not necessarily a non-trivial problem (due to DRM and license requirements), but because we do know that a Mac running Windows will play a DRMed BD disk that the hardware will allow it, so this is "only a software problem".


What asking this question reveals IMO is that there's apparently not a single OS X Software developer in the world who believes that the BD market is promising enough for him to make a profit if he were to go develop just such a product.

Perhaps a few developers can offer up their reasons for why they've chosen to remain ...with Apple... on the sidelines, thus declining this business opportunity.



-hh

 

[AidenShaw]

your premise is faulty

True, a 3rd Party software solution not necessarily a non-trivial problem (due to DRM and license requirements), but because we do know that a Mac running Windows will play a DRMed BD disk that the hardware will allow it, so this is "only a software problem".

BD requires protected media paths, which would be virtually impossible to be done without changes to many parts of the video/audio driver stack.

If someone tried to replace a bunch of the Apple OSX kernel, the legal boys from Cupertino would be "knocking the doors in".

..., as well as the "I don't want BD, and I don't want your demand for it to cost me more of my money" concern as well.

I said "pay for it" - as in the BD option would be self-supporting. Please stop bringing up FUD about the horrific cost of supporting BD without any supporting information.

FUD, pure FUD.

 

[janstett]

Didn't want to shuffle through nearly 6,000 posts to see if anyone said this, so if anyone did I apologize in advanced.

One of the reasons why Apple hasn't implemented Blu ray drives into Macs is because nobody (at least as far as I know) requires Blu ray for installing any applications. DVDs still work great and that's why Apple doesn't want to put them in.
If a person really wanted Blu Ray support on their Mac couldn't they buy a $100 external drive and play the discs through VLC?

Regarding your first point, the outgoing versions of Final Cut Studio and Logic Pro Studio are 7 and 9 DVDs each. It would be nice to have them on one or two Blu-Rays.

Secondly, it's the first answer in the should-be-FAQ for this thread -- an external drive WOULD be recognized but the Mac cannot play the content -- not without a grievous workaround.

Blu-ray is not future!

I absolutely agree! It's been mainstream since 2007.

 

[TenderBranson]

I wasn't aware that an external drive wouldn't be recognized? Why is that?

 

[janstett]

So why hasn't the 3rd Party aftermarket offered the product (of an OS X based BD player) on their own already?

I posed this question somewhere back in this thread's life. On the PC, we've got three companies making Blu-Ray players (Corel, Cyberlink, and Arcsoft). Why wouldn't one of those companies step up and write a player for Apple?

If my memory isn't failing me, Apple's DVD Player.app was written by a third party company, not Apple. Might have been based on Cineplayer technolgy but not sure. I distinctly remember that iTunes was not written by Apple but based upon an acquisition of SoundJam.

Apple, since Steve Jobs came back, is predatory and monopolistic about its apps. The example that sticks in my head is Musicmatch Jukebox, which used to be the most popular media player on the Mac. Apple paid them to stop making it to make sure iTunes was the only choice.

So given that kind of tyrannical control over the OS and something as common as a DVD or Blu-Ray player, I can see why they would stay away.

* and yes they would require at least a protected audio path and likely a protected video path, but if anybody could secure an exception it would be Apple, and they could certainly limit it to HDMI-equipped models with an appropriate PAP audio chipset.

 

[AidenShaw]

I posed this question somewhere back in this thread's life. On the PC, we've got three companies (Corel, Cyberlink, and Arcsoft). Why wouldn't one of those companies step up and write a player for Apple?

I just answered:

BD requires protected media paths, which would be virtually impossible to be done without changes to many parts of the video/audio driver stack.

More information is at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa376846.aspx .

The reason it can't be done in userland is that after decoding the video stream, the player would have the pure 2Mpixel image in its memory. A program could map to the memory, and capture the image - effectively breaking the encryption.

 

[Atlantico]

I am not too bullish on physical media. Apparently, I am not alone.

Samsung predicts Blu-ray to dry up in five years
http://www.techspot.com/news/31502-samsung-predicts-bluray-to-dry-up-in-five-years.html

"Not Samsung, they have a much gloomier picture of Blu-ray. They are also members of the Blu-ray disc association along with Sony, and concur that it's the last optical technology around. Where they differ from Sony is in how long Blu-ray will last. They claim it may have as little as five years. Even if it does manage to survive five years, Samsung thinks that it “definitely” doesn't have 10 left in it.

Since that was from an article written in 2008, and seeing how BD has taken off since the, Samsung is eating crow right now.

Will BD be the "end of the line"? Who cares. CDs are still outselling downloaded content and they were introduced in the mid 80s (almost 30 years ago)

DVDs would have lasted much longer had their capacity been adequate to contain an HD feature length movie.

I did notice something; that in the "now" and the foreseeable future, BD is more popular than downloads, DVDs still exist and even Audio CDs outsell the wildly popular iTMS and Amazon stores. In fact CDs outsell all download combined (even as they are losing ground)

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/19/cd.digital.sales/index.html

There is a wild nerd rage that demands that downloads are really teh bestzor evah, but in reality, that is not the case. They complement physical media very well and I'm quite happy that downloads exist, but that's it. Downloads need to be backed up and can only be backed up on non-permanent media such as HDs and (gasp) CD-Rs, while CD/DVD/BD are all in permanently printed media that never deteriorates.

 

[janstett]

I just answered:



More information is at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa376846.aspx .

The reason it can't be done in userland is that after decoding the video stream, the player would have the pure 2Mpixel image in its memory. A program could map to the memory, and capture the image - effectively breaking the encryption.

Your answer isn't complete -- all three players support (or at least used to support) playback on insufficient hardware/software. You can play Blu-Rays on XP; you can get full video on analog (VGA) monitors or built-in displays like a laptop or iMac. If you didn't have PAP you can still get 48/16 audio. In today's environment, doing this over HDMI should make it all irrelevant.

 

[Atlantico]

If I understand the disagreement correctly, in terms of general popularity of "A vs B", it would be my impression that for the Internet side, something the number of views of YouTube clips would be one way to start to baseline how popular the Internet has been for generalized viewing of the moving image.

We're just not discussing Youtube and its brethern.

To try to compare this to physical media, there is the unknown of how many times an individual BD disk will get replayed on average, but I'd venture to guess <10. At that assumption (YMMV), it would mean that we would need to have BD disk sales in the ballpark of 4.1B/10 = 410 million units to suggest parity.

Assuming, extrapolating, predicting, divining and speculating. It being (of course) a worthless venture and a waste of our collective time (even more). Why is a youtube 10 second-5 minute video in any way shape or form comparable to BD?

Are we going to just say, the internet is far more popular for data than optical disks? Because that's true, but it's also completely irrelevant. If I want to publish my movie, I don't do it on youtube. Youtube isn't for making money (pocket change if you're lucky) and it is a joke for distribution of quality video. It is unreliable, like is inherent with all cloud computing, and is more for fun, jokes and conspiracy theories than serious stuff. Serious meaning, stuff you pay for.

Thus it is completely dishonest to try to make this about youtube. It coexists with downloads and physical media.

As per Wiki (which lacks 2010 data), it looks like BD is probably in the 400-450 million units sold ballpark....so it sounds reasonable to suggest that we're in the right ballpark for "Parity". But this is parity in 2011 to data from 2009 and even then, it was from only one streaming media website and only a small (albeit most popular) percentage of their total catalog.

In a fit of nerd rage, a user claimed that "the internet" was superior or more popular than BD in any way (I'm paraphrasing), now you come in and try to plug the leaks of that statement - but there aren't any leaks, it's just one big hole.

You have to compare "the internet" to BD on the same merits. BD isn't for nonsense like youtube videos. That's what youtube is for. In fact, as others have pointed out, animated GIFs are probably more popular than youtube or any other type of video (in the wide sense that you are using video to support the stupid statement made before)

Since we've already counted 100% on the physical media side and we know that the other side isn't a 100% accounting, I'd personally conclude that the claim of "...internet a far more popular medium than Blu-ray..." does indeed appears to have a reasonable basis.

No, not at all, since the reasoning is done with the assumption that internet and BD are converging and competing in all aspects of moving data to RAM. (which is basically what you're saying) I'm sure hard-drives are even more popular than the internet!

That statement doesn't have a meaning, though I'm sure I could extrapolate data out of my ass to support that argument. Pointless and fruitless exercise; like your "reasoning" in this post.

But what do I know? I'm just some guy on the internet without a dog in the hunt on either side.
-hh

Well, by making this post, I really have to agree with you. What do you know? (nothing about this topic, seemingly)

You're essentially making the same logical fallacy as the poster before (I don't remember the name, the one that claimed the internet was blah blah blah, you know who) - namely to make a claim, out of thin air, back it up with nothing (though you did go a step beyond and backed it up with extrapolated nothing.. it's the same thing really)

 

[Atlantico]

A naive statement would be that there are youtube videos with more views than Avatar has sold BluRay copies. This would be as -hh aptly put it, low hanging fruit.

That's so dumb, because on one hand - yes, youtube very popular. MorphingDrangon very cool.

On the other hand - you said more popular in every conceivable way: now in the conceivable way of purchased feature length movies.

Oh what! Now BD is more popular than the internet! -- Which was my point, the topic of this thread, and the only logical way to parse your argument (which was stupid to begin with, but well, you knew that)

More formally, The long tail theory says so. As a film becomes more and more obscure, it lessens that chance that it will appear in retailers or even BD.

By definition an obscure thing is less likely to appear anywhere. Hence the descriptive word: obscure.

Consider this graph,

I did and now I'm rolling my eyes.

Consider the green shaded area, in media studies this represents the mainstream media. This is the stuff that stores sell, and a majority of this will be blu ray and DVD products with the rest being internet media. Now consider the yellow shaded area, this represents obscure media, stuff that stores wont sell because its not popular or it is simply old. Again, some of this will be blu ray, but it is mostly internet media. Youtube movies, video streaming sites, iTunes etc.

Distribution of even obscure movies on Youtube is illegal. Are you still advocating that?

That article you linked to, only includes mainstream media that is put on BluRay plus its not from a 3rd party so its questionable.

It cites sources, so as long as the research was ok, then there's nothing questionable about that article.

Since you seem to claim that this only includes mainstream media, not any alternative releases of Blu-ray, clearly you have read the research that this article is based on.

Tell us about this research. Were you pleased with it, and what would you improve, if you could?

 

[AidenShaw]

Your answer isn't complete -- all three players support (or at least used to support) playback on insufficient hardware/software. You can play Blu-Rays on XP; you can get full video on analog (VGA) monitors or built-in displays like a laptop or iMac. If you didn't have PAP you can still get 48/16 audio. In today's environment, doing this over HDMI should make it all irrelevant.

VGA is analog, that is allowed (since snagging the RGB analog signals does not give you the original digital image). Note that it's possible for a BD to be set so that analog video can be SD quality only.

Internal displays are allowed, because intercepting the LVDS signals is considered sufficiently difficult as to not be an issue.

XP does require HDCP monitor connections. It also benefits from the moratorium (ended or soon-to-end) on the ICT flag on BD movies.

 

[linux2mac]

http://www.samsung.com/us/video/blu-ray-dvd

However, Samsung is satisfying customer demands for BD today - not taking the soup-Nazi approach of "no 1080p for you (for 5 to 10 years)" that the turtlenecked overlord prescribes for Apple.

Do you not buy a gasoline-powered automobile today, because the predictions are that other power sources are in the pipeline? ...and therefore you stay at home or walk for years until those power sources are practical?

Not sure to what you are referring. I use Netflix Instant for the times when I want to instantly rent 1080p and 5.1 films. If something is not available, I request that the DVD or Blu-Ray (if it even exists) be sent through Netflix by mail. If I absolutely need to see it today, I rent the HDX version on Vudu. Very satisfied with the 5.1, 1080p, and 24fps it provides. I've rented 1080p films on Blu-Ray to compare to the HDX version, and I would consider the difference negligible at best. This setup works great for me, and I save a ton of money compared to my previous experience renting DVDs from Blockbuster. Further, the comment made by Samsung in 2008 is in line with graphs you yourself have posted predicting Blu-Ray to rise until 2013 and then begin a decline. We're half way through 2011. Do I really want to invest in a medium expected to peek in the next 18 months or so?

By the way, I rent the HDX Vudu films on my Blu-Ray player/gaming console, the Sony PS3. Talk about irony.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

By the way, I rent the HDX Vudu films on my Blu-Ray player/gaming console, the Sony PS3. Talk about irony.

Hmmm, delicious. Does vudu work while the PSN is down? I can still get Netflix to run while it's down for the count, but I've heard reports of people losing the ability to get netflix working as of today.