I don't imagine Apple releasing a technology merely as a "stop-gap", just to appease all the Blu Ray wanters. Not gonna happen, not ever. PERIOD.
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Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon
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I don't imagine Apple releasing a technology merely as a "stop-gap", just to appease all the Blu Ray wanters. Not gonna happen, not ever. PERIOD.
Using your logic, we can say the same thing about everything and every person. But, I still felt like eating today. And I think that's ok.
You know, people keep saying this. I guess I shouldn't have just watched a movie with Dolby Digital from my Mac, then?!?
I guess the thing I have most trouble understanding is that how can it be considered a negative for the iMac to include Blu-ray? How can it hurt the consumer to have one? I can understand why a consumer would want one. But I don't understand how a person can make an argument on why it should not have Blu-ray.
With the logic most of the anti-Blu-ray crowd have here, Apple is wasting their time including an Ethernet port on the iMac even though wireless is already becoming the standard. But it doesn't hurt to have the port on there. Just like it wouldn't hurt if a Blu-ray drive was in the iMac. I personally have no need for the Ethernet port or FireWire, but I wouldn't make 20 posts on a forum about why the iMac shouldn't include it.
I don't think anyone can consider 3 to 5 years as a stop-gap. In fact, most people buy a new computer every 4 years.
With the logic most of the anti-Blu-ray crowd have here, Apple is wasting their time including an Ethernet port on the iMac even though wireless is already becoming the standard. But it doesn't hurt to have the port on there. Just like it wouldn't hurt if a Blu-ray drive was in the iMac. I personally have no need for the Ethernet port or FireWire, but I wouldn't make 20 posts on a forum about why the iMac shouldn't include it.
I don't think anyone can consider 3 to 5 years as a stop-gap. In fact, most people buy a new computer every 4 years.
It's unlikely to happen, if at all. You can be facecious, down-rate me, whatever - I care not, but I think Blu Ray would be here by now, were they even interested in another iteration of a little spinning plastic disc, along with all the vulnerability that comes with it. It's VERY VERY unlikely to be adopted, and no amount of counter-arguments or outlandish reasoning will make it so.
I'm telling you this - the future AIN'T spinning plastic discs!
I'm telling you this - the future AIN'T spinning plastic discs!
More tripe.
Interesting how something that has been dead for 5 years now continues to grow and gain more and more sales and is accounting for 60% of sales of big blockbusters on disc. I wish the Mac was so dead.
Speaking of which, if you're so concerned about what's dead and what's not, why did you <presumably> buy a computer that only has 5-10% market share?
If you want to compare market share, Blu-Rays share of home video trounces the Mac's share of personal computers.
Not only has that format war been over since they pulled the plug on HD-DVD in January 2008, but people had already called Blu-Ray the winner in mid 2007. Four years ago, friend, move on.
Not that it would have mattered anyway, because Apple lined up behind Blu-Ray in March 2005. Apple was on board (and on The Board) 6 years ago, what happened? The iTunes movie store happened.
The increase in resolution from VHS to DVD was roughly 2x (~330x480 to 720x480).
The increase in resolution from DVD to Blu-Ray is roughly 6x (720x480 to 1920x1080).
Essentially, Blu-Ray is a better DVD whose main upgrade is that it supports high definition and lossless audio. Is that bad? I remember people were complaining that DVD wasn't high def back when it came out in 1997.
I'll tell you what else is good about it. It can hold up to 50GB as opposed to DVD's best of 9GB. It offers the choice of 3 video codecs, MPEG2, VC1, and AVC. VC1 and AVC are far more sophisticated and efficient than poor old MPEG2, which is what DVD uses. It has a slew of audio support -- three lossless codecs (PCM, Dolby True HD, DTS HD-MA) and more lossy codecs that are more sophisticated versions of what's on DVD. It's got a lot more interactivity, can pull content from the internet, you can fiddle around in the disc menus without stopping the movie. In short, it is a better DVD. The same people who worked on DVD worked on it. They applied what they learned with DVD to make it better.
Spoken like someone who doesn't have HDTV (and I'm guessing you don't because most of you who don't understand the need for it don't). Nobody's saying DVD is dead, there's just a better version of it now. Nobody's saying to replace your DVDs, just start buying Blu-Rays from now on.
NTSC TV served us well from its introduction at the World's Fair in 1939. The only changes were the addition of color and stereo. By the 1990s it was time for something better and ATSC (HDTV) was born. It's safe now, you can buy an HDTV.
You're right, it's actually better. There are more Blu-Ray players sold now than there were DVD players in 2001.
Blu-Ray is outselling DVD at the same points in their lives. Makes sense, because Blu-Ray is only a better DVD and you can still play your old DVDs on a Blu-Ray player. With players well under $100, why not take the dive?
and its' not as if it has only just been released, either.
To all those who complain that Apple don't use Blu Ray drives, I suggest you sit down and think the logic through a little deeper - it's not exactly "revolutionary" in the same way that VHS ---> DVD was, it's just another spinning plastic disc, albeit with higher resolution... oh, and you HAVE to buy a new HDTV too, Mr Consumer person
Just as I predicted.
Have you been in an electronics store lately? Everything is HD now. It's a wider world, and it's not just Blu-Ray that requires HD. It's television (over the air, cable, satellite), it's video game consoles, hell even my Canon 7D SLR has HDMI to output photos and videos to an HDTV. Apple TV won't work without an HDTV.
Not to mention you kind of just killed your own argument. Yes, Blu-Ray is not revolutionary in the same way DVD is. It isn't a radical change. It's an improvement over DVD. So there's no risk involved, easy to make the transition, it's no shock moving from DVD to Blu-Ray. It's an easy, painless transition.
Only problem is it IS happening. Right now, and has been for at least 4 years. Apple realized it would be happening when they signed on board with Blu-Ray in 2005. Apple is missing out.
Now, if Apple can't even handle the present, what makes you think they can't miss on the future?
And once you plug in the dirve OSX won't play the movies, that's the problem. It's only been stated about 7 billion times in this thread.
And your opinion is wrong, or at very least uninformed, several examples of which are glaring in your post.
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SPDIF doesn't count, you know that's not what we're talking about.
SPDIF is limited to ONLY lossy prepackaged multichannel and you will AT BEST get DTS and most of the time only 512kbps or lower Dolby Digital. Further the Mac will not encode Dolby Digital on the fly (called Dolby Digital Live) so you can't play anything not pre-encoded such as multichannel flacs, for example. Pulling anything out requires a DD/DTS decoder in the receiver. The ONLY media you can play are DVDs and DTS CDs.
What we are talking about is actual, pure decoded lossless multichannel -- either via analog or HDMI.
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Rosetta was a stop gap to ease the transition from Power PC to Intel.
The Mac Classic enviornment in early versions of OSX was a stop gap to ease the transition from OS9 to OSX.
The original iPhone did not support 3G and only offerred EDGE, a stop gap solution.
Is Snow Leopard a "stop gap" between Leopard and Tiger?
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Gosh, what a hilarious and opinionated rant. The personal digs don't exactly add any weight to your points, and only serve to confirm to me that you're only interested in forcing your points in as uncivil a way as possible.
Blu Ray would be on Mac by now, if the longevity of the tech & price of the drives & media were acceptably low. Over £1 per disc after all this time, clearly shows that your mass adoption is absent; people use PVRs now.
Not happening, I'm almost certain, and another reason is that DVD media is used all the time for data backups; it's GOT to be more versatile than just watching movies, and the price says it all, for the adoption by the masses.
Sorry to not be in direct alignment with your utopia.
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Translation: you got nothing. Turn tail and run.
If I got too gruff with you, I apologize, it's not personal. But it's because you are at very least misinformed and basing most of your assertions on that misinformation, and you are not the first person in this thread to do so. Every three pages some noob comes up and disparages Blu-Ray despite knowing next to nothing about it.
Read the links I provided. I am providing facts even if you don't like the personal opinion they are sandwiched between. Then if you have a problem with what I am saying, dispute my facts and the conclusions I draw based on them.
Such as I did when I called you out on Apple not releasing "stop gap" technology when two of the most important moves they made in OSX's history are stop gap technologies -- Rosetta and Classic.
Why, what do you know, Blu-Ray IS more versatile than just watching movies. 50GB of data storage sounds a lot better than the 9GB offerred by dual layer DVDs, doesn't it? The problem here is that BD-R media has been pretty expensive (although it now seems to be about $1 for a 25gb BD-R) and we've reached the point where it makes more sense to back up to external hard drives and RAID arrays or NAS's.
You're not even in remote alignment with present reality, and if anybody is dreaming of a utopia, it's you download-only people, for the reasons already cited ad-infinitum (crappy 720p, bandwidth caps, net neutrality, et al).
Blu-Ray is currently outpacing DVD at the same points in both products' lives and is accounting for as much as 60% of the home video disc market on new titles (average of about 25-30% overall). Do you dispute either fact or will you continue making your assertions based on -- what exactly?
I'm telling you this - the future AIN'T spinning plastic discs!
The future may be direct neural input to your cortex. But the recent past, present, and near future ARE spinning plastic discs, at least if you want the best quality. If and when iTunes and Netflix offer 50mbps 1080p H.264 with lossless 24-bit 7.1 audio, I'll reconsider.
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So... you apologise, and in the next breath continue your insulting me? Top marks for tactics there, really convincing me. Not.
I tell you what, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt - for all I know, you're having a bad day/week - how about I leave this thread, and let you go and passively abuse someone else?
PS: Lion & all future Mac apps are distributed DIGITALLY, over the internet. What is that telling you, if *I'm* not getting through?
Maybe this article will help?: http://www.techradar.com/news/video/blu-ray/blu-ray-will-be-dead-by-2012-here-s-why--464705
Plan! Have a great rest-of-week.
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Pointing out you are wrong is not an insult.
And again, it's not personal, it's not YOU specifically. It's the people who do what you've done every 3 pages, spout misinformation and misconceptions about Blu-Ray. My words are directed at any and all of them.
The facts I am providing are definitely not convincing you, since you still haven't taken on any single one of them head-on and now you're running away. That's the easiest way discredit me, prove something I am saying is wrong, as I proved what you said is wrong. Your statements are misinformed, and the fact that you can't back up what you said (and in fact have been proven wrong) and then run away only underscores it. Hit and run. Drive-by assertions. Spout an untruth and then disappear around the corner.
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FYI, those are bandwidth comparisons.
To compare 'resolution' is slightly different, since to "double" resolution classically requires making the pixel half as small in both dimensions...which means that achieving 2x the resolution invariably requires 4x the bandwidth.
On that level, it isn't bad. However, there's also a big bag of DRM which is still changing, which makes supportability a PITA.
Oh, goodie: now I only need 4 BD disks to store a single backup of my personal photos ... instead of one single Hard Drive...oh, and the HDD is still cheaper, too.
Frankly, too few people care about such geek minutia. They simply want to push a button and have it work.
Spoken like someone who hasn't pulled the cotton out of his ears to hear what the "Average Consumer" is literally saying today..?
And the Average Consumer's sentiments is that he's already bought that Disney movie twice before, and he doesn't want to go buy it a third time. True, this isn't technically the case, but this is how the consumer perceives the situation to be, which is oftentimes more important.
Great! Now will the World Economy get any better if we all watch the nightly TV News in HDTV?
In units, sure ... but that's because the marketplace pie is bigger, which is the same reason why & how Windows Vista also "outsold" prior versions too...
Just because something is unpopular doesn't mean it is wrong. And frankly, the up/down-rating of posts on MR is a BS feature, because a poster can vote on his own...and we do see that some (insecure?) individuals promptly give themselves a +1 as soon as they post anything new...just like how they jab the -1 button for anything that they feel threatened by.
-hh
When I see an insult, intentional or otherwise in the opening sentence of a post, my eyes automatically glaze over, and I discard anything from that point onward, so you're wasting keystrokes - I didn't and won't even bother reading your posts. Fix your attitude.
Yep, that was me. Not doing that again and don't miss my wall of jewel cases. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the superb picture and sound quality BD offers (when the arrive from Netflix), but I am not rushing out to replace my DVD titles with the BD versions (if available like The Human Stain). My only BD purchase has been a pre-order of the Star Wars BD boxed set from Amazon (due to collectors purposes).
When at some point in the future I buy a blu-ray player I know I will not go out and replace my DVD collection with Blu-ray disk but I would stop buying DVD and buy Blu-rays when I do buy disk.
My biggest problem with Apple not offering Blu-ray as a build to order is streaming media is still a long ways off from being up to the quality to compete head to head. We are quite a ways off from having the bandwidth be able to stream and download the movies at Blu-Ray quality.
I keep seeing this mentioned, but if Apple was serious about dropping DVD from their devices, they'd have done a lot more in this regard than merely offering a DVD-less mac mini and the mac book airs. The MBA has been around for 3 1/2 years now; the imac g3 was released in late 98; was Apple still selling computers with floppy drives in 2001, 2002?
I don't think optical drives are going away any time soon in Macs... otherwise they'd have pushed harder for removing them than they have. How long did it take for Apple to stop offering DVD-Combo drives?
Well I never suggested they would drop DVD drives soon, but in a 3 to 5 year time frame. The comment about the Mac Book Air being the future of laptops, are not my words, but Steve Jobs. I am sure Apple will still sell a separate DVD drive for those that need them, but my guess in five years time the only Mac that is likely to have a built in drive will be the Mac Pro. Those that don't think this is likely good luck buying lion on DVD. Apple are moving away from supplying software on DVD and have plans to remove optical media from their brick and mortar stores as well.
not great timing
... just as the "upper crust" of customers that Apple courts is moving to Blu-ray Discs for their HD systems.
... just as the "upper crust" of customers that Apple courts is moving to Blu-ray Discs for their HD systems.
Well this is whole crux of it really. Apple is no longer targeting the 'upper crust' of customers who want the best quality, but those people who are happy with the convenience and quality of downloaded media as 'Good Enough'. To be blunt it looks like it is paying off for Apple as they can't make iPads quick enough and MacBook airs are flying off the shelf as well.
I understand that this upsets a lot of traditional Mac users, but this is the direction that Apple are taking.
This approach works fine, for as long as there's "combo" BR-DVD players. Granted, that risk is reasonably low for now...but just like 400K floppies, that day will come.
Agreed, particularly if one adds in a qualifier of bandwidth affordability.
Agreed, and what makes it further disconcerting is that it isn't suddenly new news, since the indicators have easily been around for a long time ... since the first sound quality complaint on the first iPod's earbuds, at least.
-hh
Sad but true. Of course Apple offering the option of Blu-ray support for those who want it wouldn't really hurt them at all - especially if Blu-ray were as doomed as many claim. But apparently they'd rather try to force everyone onto their iTunes accounts for everything, even when it's practically impossible or highly undesirable for some people.
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