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

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With the inclusion of an HDMI slot in the Mac Mini refresh a few weeks ago, I wouldn't be surprised to see a BD included in the overdue AppleTV refresh. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if the refresh didn't include such a drive. The post production process for everything has grown exponentially after picture lock and audio post. An editor, for example, may make one movie trailer and finish it uncompressed, but the post house or distributor now has equipment that, in one box, will create a version for theaters, TV, iTunes, streaming, iPod/Phone, and H.264. The same applies to every other show/movie/commercial...you name it.

Like the advent of MiniHDV tape a while back that's now obsolete, it's getting to be all math, all numbers. Keep in mind that anytime you buy a Blue Ray movie, especially from Pixar or Disney (Steve has his hand in both) you get a digital download. There's a precedent being set there, a period of time getting the consumer used to the idea of buying the movie and downloading the product. As time goes by, that downloadable format will get better as the codecs improve and play with the numbers better.

Because of the amount of media just we in America consumes, I doubt there's enough bandwidth in the world to support everyone streaming movies or TV shows all day so I don't think we'll ever completely on the cloud (though it will be an option). Local storage will have to be a part of the future paradigm. I just wonder how many people will find it easier to have one digital copy they can store on a drive and play on their TV, or sync to their car/van system or iPod/Pad on the go.

It's a brave new world we live in.
 
3rd party Blue RayPlayers?

Does anyone know of the video hardware SDK that apple has released will allow in any way for third party players to write Blu-Ray player software? I know some of the restrictions to writing blu-ray players include authenticating that he video card supports a few different standards (in hardware)... are these open to developers? Can apple's release of the hardware SDK allow for back door and LEGAL blu-ray player software?

Any thoughts?
 
What about those people with Macs who are in content creation and would like to shoot high-def and burn their movie creations to Blu-Ray for sharing their HD creations with others?

Does this mean that content creators, who have been the mainstay of Apple's "pro" desktop line, have no options to create Blu-Ray movie/video content? I'm asking because I'm not too versed about content creation, but it would appear to be a very important market that Jobs is saying doesn't matter because everything will ultimately be on iTunes. ????
 
I would buy a Mac Mini if it had a Blu-ray R/W player. I'd make it my media center and hook it up to my plasma which would allow me to disconnect my external hard drives from my laptop and hook them to the Mac Mini. I'm thinking this would also allow me to take advantage of streaming internet content also since hooking my laptop to my TV is a pain in the a$$.

I also like the idea of creating video disks to take on the road with multiple movies without bothering to fill my laptops hard drive.

I'm thinking Apple should re-think their philosophy on this topic--assuming this is a valid reply from Apple.
 
I agree. I also don't think the mp3 fad will last very long. mp3s are way inferior in sound quality to CDs and you don't get the liner notes you can page through. There are a lot of us still on metered dialup and we cannot be downloading a 60MB album all the time. Plus i will not pay $12 for a digital download that I can't resell. Wake up Steve :mad:
 
Dear Mr. Jobs,

I've watched "high def" movies from the iTunes store. I'm sorry, but they don't hold a candle to Blu-ray. Yes, I can see the difference.

I've got nearly 300 Blu-ray movies in my collection. I've rented hundreds of other Blu-rays at the RedBox kiosk for $1. If I can't get the movie on Blu-ray, I don't watch it. Period. I will no longer rent a DVD under any circumstances and I've been selling off my DVD collection because I simply can't stand watching the inferior image quality on my 70" 1080p display.

The number of movies I plan to watch from the iTunes store (or NetFlix or any other streaming source) in the foreseeable future: ZERO

That said, being a movie nut, I do enjoy watching my digital copies of movies (included with some Blu-ray packages) on my iPhone from time to time. I don't expect Apple to offer a Blu-ray drive for the iPhone. :)

Lastly, if Apple could find a way to make some money off of every Blu-ray disc played on Apple products, would Apple then consider offering a Blu-ray drive? (Rhetorical question.)

Mark
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
Why would anyone want a hard copy? To me, it's like having a bank account. Would you rather have your employer pay you in hard cold cash or wire it automatically to your bank account? For personal purposes, hard copies of movies don't make sense. Why have piles of DVDs or Blu-Ray discs when you can just store them on an external HD? Discs take up space and I doubt you watch them very often.
Click to expand...
Books take up space and aren't read often yet people collect them. I have full bookcases and full DVD/BD/Game racks I like having some physical media around. Its a collection which other people can see if they visit, etc. Becomes a conversation piece. Yes, you could store everything on an external hdd, all your books on an ipad, all your music in itunes, but it gets a bit introverted.. I like that my daughter (two) can walk up, pick something off the shelf and talk to me about it.

I'm past CDs, but DVD and BD still have their pros.. I *really* like dvd/bd extras, production stuff and so on. I've not seen that offered comprehensively on any download service. If I want to show someone the gist of a dvd in my collection i can just hand them the box and they get an idea. If I want DVD content on an iphone etc I can use Ripit.. If I want to lend someone something for some reason with physical media I can easily. If you want to send/receive gifts or use amazon wishlist etc you can.. You can support your local retailers too with physical media. Its no more/less convenient than downloads depending on how it fits around the rest of your life (and broadband limitations)
 
Oh, I like watching all the extra stuff on a Blu-ray, like alternate soundtracks etc. I don't think you get all of that from iTunes currently, but maybe that's coming soon.

While I agree that physical media will depart at some time in the not so distant future, I doubt it will occur overnight--maybe in the next 5 years. These things change gradually and there is plenty of time to find use in Blu-ray technology.
 
In my opinion, Blu-ray movies should be kept to home entertainment centers and stand-alone players. That is where they reign King.
 
I guess some people would rather just have all their media on their HDD's, so as to save space on their shelves. But personally, I like the look of the 10 or so and growing Blu colored cases on my shelf.

Also, I don't and probably will not in the near future have anywhere near the bandwidth to stream HD. Netflix stutters as it is. Of course, I live in rural Nebraska where the fastest financially feasible connection is at about 1.5mb/s :mad:
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
Why would anyone want a hard copy? To me, it's like having a bank account. Would you rather have your employer pay you in hard cold cash or wire it automatically to your bank account? For personal purposes, hard copies of movies don't make sense. Why have piles of DVDs or Blu-Ray discs when you can just store them on an external HD?
Click to expand...
If you want hundreds of movies in Blu-ray quality at home (they're about 7 GB ripped), it ain't gonna be no "external disk" it's going to be a rack of 8-drive NAS servers that consume more power than your TV and sound like a refrigerator on a hot day. Goodbye single NAS drive, hello household server room.

Also, what I really enjoy about DVD/Blu-ray is all the extras (behind the scenes, multiple commentary tracks etc) and that stuff is usually excluded with downloadable versions. The complete 5-disc ultimate edition of Blade Runner in Blu-ray quality would probably take 2 weeks to download.

You don't need 720P/1080P to have enjoy a good movie. It helps the experience but the cost is just too high.
Click to expand...
Here's what bugs me about that. For decades the entertainment business (along with electronics manufacturers) fought a long struggle for higher quality. From 78 RPM 'rock cookies' to 33 RPM mono to stereo to CD. From analog to digital. From mono sound in theaters to THX. In 1985 or so I dreamed of the year 2010 when I'd be enjoying super immersive hi-res 3D movies and quadrophonic 32-bit 96 kHz music albums at home. But here I am in 2010 watching grainy YouTube clips and listening to 192k mp3 files... which is WORSE than the VHS tapes and music CDs I had in 1985.

Well I'm not gonna settle for a drop in quality with all this amazing technology we have, and Steve should know better than to settle for "good enough".
 
I author DVDs for a living and have spent some time doing basic Blu Ray work.. All I can say is Steve is right. Blu Ray is a terrible mess of a standard. The video looks great for sure, but Sony never made it accessible or even standardized the spec.

As a video professional in LA who's pretty much in the thick of the content creation and distribution industry, trust me: there is VERY little emphasis on Blu-Ray. It's mostly still all about DVD or downloadable content. The public hasn't adopted HD the way Sony was expecting so even Sony has pretty much abandoned the technology.

I don't blame Apple for skipping the format... It's half baked and way too expensive for their market to develop for.
 
Blu-ray + Flash...

...would make OS X beachball like crazy. It's bad enough as it is. Doesn't matter since OS X is on it's way out. You would think though that Steve Jobs having faced death would be a little more humble. Instead he sounds like a 90 year old grandma with his short, gruff remarks. Maybe death really isn't that far off...
 
I wish Jobs wouldn't reply to people, but if he does I wish it wasn't about inane questions like Blu-ray.

If Siva wants to backup content with Blu-ray he can. Just by an external BRD or the appropriate internal BRD and you're good to go.

Even if adding a BRD to Mac Mini or any Mac doesn't mean you'll be able to playback protected BR movies in Mac OS X. He'd still have to boot into Windows. Apple needs to add AACS to Mac OS X first... FIRST!


PS: Anyone have a component cost for a BRD for the Mac Mini's 9.5mm ultra-slim slot-loading SATAII ODD? $600? $800?
 
I've never bought or rented a single movie on iTunes yet I own about a hundred blurays. Why? 1080p and HD audio.

If I'm going to be spending my money on a film then I want to have it in the highest quality commercially available. I can tell the difference between 1080p and 720p very easily.

I honestly don't see downloadable films making optical discs redundant for a good while yet. Watching a movie is really a very different experience to listening to a song. Most people don't sit down to listen to an album - most people will take an album with them on the go and listen to it as they go around their day to day business. Most people will, however, sit down and watch a music - they will dedicate 2 odd hours to watching said movie. As such, walking to a dvd/bluray library is not a big deal.

The only way digital streaming and downloading can take over from optical disk formats is if the digital movies supersede the quality available on optical disks, take up a smaller proportion of standard hard drive sizes and can be downloaded in a matter of minutes using most people's internet connections.

h264 is in many ways a more efficient codec compared to those used on bluray discs and would be capable of superior quality to bluray discs whilst using a smaller file size so that's one hurdle out the way. The second biggest hurdle is a significant increase in hard drive sizes. While most computers come standard with only a 500GB drive, using up 8GB per film is too much to ask. At a guess, 5TB drives on standard machines would be necessary for 8GB films to be feasible to the masses. The biggest hurdle is internet speeds, that will take quite some time to overcome.

As far as streaming films go, the internet speeds are one major hurdle for superior quality but the second is that people don't like to pay money for streaming a film rather than owning it so a free distribution system would be needed that is advert or subscription based. One that is universal and has every film available to it.

None of this is going to be fixed within the next few years and then chances are in five years time we'll be looking at the successor to Bluray with even higher quality visuals and audio and 60" 3D capable TVs could well be mainstream with most upper-mainstream consumers buying 70+" displays at the cost of current 46" panels.
 
Might as well put a fork in it, guys.

6 more years and Blu-Ray will be dead or dying.
If he says "no time soon" it means 2 years certain, 3+ years probable.
By the time Apple does Blu disk, it'll be giving way to the next planned Sony format they've had planned for about 30 years now: the chip/USB drive/memory card/wafer.

And when they finally DO bring out that format in 2015 or so, it will be excellent; NO MORE SPINNING CRAP DRIVES.
 
One thought,

I don't know if all these suggestions of streamed access to cloud content, or served up from netflix is even based on reality.

The internet can't handle all the traffic.
I have Time Warner Cable Extreme --- the wider pipe version, and i still have problems, ie right now i am trying to watch a movie on netflix vod, and it keeps stopping and starting.

so... i don't know why blu-ray is getting dealt a bum hand by Apple. it's great tech and you can use it whenever. and if you love a movie, no need to do repeat rentals, or... take up limited valuable hard drive space on your laptop when you travel.

i love BD, better quality than streaming also. and if you need to you can lend your copy to a friend.
 
Blu-ray is here to stay for a while. If someone wants to watch a movie in 3D the only way to do it will be on blu-ray.
 
Minimoose 360 said:
In my opinion, Blu-ray movies should be kept to home entertainment centers and stand-alone players. That is where they reign King.
Click to expand...

I have a Mac Mini (first Intel model) in my home theater rack as a home theater PC. I use the Mac Mini to show pre-movie slide presentations (movie trivia, etc), custom home theater intros (see a couple of my "Booth Bijou" custom intros HERE), and coming attraction or now playing trailers. Having a Blu-ray drive in a newer Mac Mini would be a MAJOR enticement for me to upgrade my current Mini.

Mark
 
I have a Blu-Ray player, and I use to have Blu-Ray on my Netflix but turned it off for 2 reasons:

1) (and this is related to the thread) I was tethered to that one Blu-ray box. Couldn't watch it on the TV upstairs (no Blu-ray), couldn't watch it on my laptop.

2) (not related, but this really bugs me) A lot of Blu-Ray discs flat out wouldn't work until I hooked my mac up to the blu-ray player (doesn't have WiFi so I had to share my internet connection) and wait a full 20 minutes for the Blu-Ray player to update. This is, in my opinion, broken. I never had to download updates for my DVD player. I never had to download updates for my VCR. I never had to download updates for my CD player etc etc... Broken.
 
Weird technical question:

Can VMware Fusion or Parallels (using their hypervisors) play BD movies in Windows Vista/7 if played from an external BD drive?

I'm guessing not.. But it would be nice.
 
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