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seriously, when DVD came out, the first rounds of players were obsolete not even 2 years later when "Dual Layer" discs came out. Everyone paid hundreds of dollars for players that couldn't play newer discs.

You are mistaken.

the 1st gen DVD players could all playback dual layer films.

However, early DVD players did pause briefly when this happened, leading to many people thinking there DVD player was broken.

This le to the disclaimer on the back of all DVD box's pointing out layer changing.
 
blue-ray vs HDDVD doesn't matter anymore and that is probably the reason apple has withheld it
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10610923
Who needs physical discs?
1. People without broadband.
2. People who buy/collect movies.
3. People with or without broadband who do not want to "wire" their living rooms with CAT5e.
4. People with small children.
5. People without any internet access or computers.
6. People who want 1080p without compression artifacts.
7. People with broadband which impose bandwidth caps.
 
Who needs physical discs?
1. People without broadband.
2. People who buy/collect movies.
3. People with or without broadband who do not want to "wire" their living rooms with CAT5e.
4. People with small children.
5. People without any internet access or computers.
6. People who want 1080p without compression artifacts.
7. People with broadband which impose bandwidth caps.

most of the above people think Blue-ray is a combo of Jeff Foxworthy's Blue collar tour combined with a Billy Ray concert.
Can I get a heee-yaaaa
:p
 
Disc's are not going away for many, many years. Until you can download video that is not compressed as He** I'll take a Blu-Ray disc.
Wait until movie downloading becomes more prevalent and watch the ISP's start to charge for bandwidth. You can see that coming already. Hopeful some competition will prevent that, but I would not count on it.
 
most of the above people think Blue-ray is a combo of Jeff Foxworthy's Blue collar tour combined with a Billy Ray concert.
Can I get a heee-yaaaa
:p
Uh.... I don't know where you live but Wal-mart is selling 40"+ 1080p LCD TVs for under 800 bucks.

More people know what Blu-ray is compared with HD DVD.
 
Who needs physical discs?
1. People without broadband.
2. People who buy/collect movies.
3. People with or without broadband who do not want to "wire" their living rooms with CAT5e.
4. People with small children.
5. People without any internet access or computers.
6. People who want 1080p without compression artifacts.
7. People with broadband which impose bandwidth caps.

Blu-Ray is the new format eventually replacing DVD. Apple TV and all the other digital download services will be lucky if they get 5%.

No one wants to download movies, except for us geeks.
 
i for one welcome our new Blu Ray overlords

:p Oh my gosh. Your post reminds me of when Kent Brockman saw the pictures of the ants and thought the world was being overtaken by them. *laughs* Man, I miss the old Simpson episodes.
 
Well I had a whole lot to say, but my session timed out, but wanted to at least convey the highlights.

I think any technology war like this is bad for namely the consumer, second if Sony doesn't screw things up they can be successful at this, third I can feel for those adopting HD DVD, and those who purchased early Blue-Ray players and can't play the newer disks. Last I am thankful for the forums here, I don't post much but I do a lot of reading, and I have to say the Apple community as a whole are a great bunch of People indeed.
 
You are mistaken.

the 1st gen DVD players could all playback dual layer films.

However, early DVD players did pause briefly when this happened, leading to many people thinking there DVD player was broken.

Also, the early DVDs were mastered with both layers starting at the inner tracks - when the first layer ended the head had to be moved from the very outside of the disk to the inside tracks for the second layer.

Most current DVDs are mastered with the first track recorded inside to outside, and the second layer is recorded outside to inside. This avoids having to move the laser a long distance, and hides the layer switch most of the time.
 
They are in Canada's Wal-marts. No Polaroid brand though.
I'd like to see some evidence of that. That price would be well below what other vendors are charging, and as someone who lived in Vancouver for two years, I'm not inclined to believe that Canadian Walmarts offer very much of quality--their higher end products are generally no cheaper than other retailers.

Their website doesn't even list any 1080p LCDs, and Futureshop's cheapest 1080p is $1299. I can't imagine Walmart beating out another big-box supplier by $500.

Brand, model number, and price, please.
 
Well I had a whole lot to say, but my session timed out, but wanted to at least convey the highlights.

I think any technology war like this is bad for namely the consumer, second if Sony doesn't screw things up they can be successful at this, third I can feel for those adopting HD DVD, and those who purchased early Blue-Ray players and can't play the newer disks. Last I am thankful for the forums here, I don't post much but I do a lot of reading, and I have to say the Apple community as a whole are a great bunch of People indeed.

Please stop with the misinformation regarding Blu-Ray.

Blu-Ray players of the first generation, v1.0, will be able to play future Blu-Ray disks quite well, thank you. What you won't get is Bonus View (which is Picture-In-Picture) which arrived with v1.1, and Blu-Ray Live (which is interactivity via the internet) which is upcoming soon in v2.0.

All Blu-Ray players are 1080p while some of the intial HD-DVD players were 1080i.

Not a deal breaker for most people.
 
What everyone seems to forget is that Apple doesn't manufacture HD players or sell movies. They do make computers that are used to create movie content, however, regardless of final output format. They don't have to pick one "side" or another. In fact, they can't.

:cool:

They do decide what type of players/burners to put in their computers though, and format their OS will accommodate.
 
Folks,

In my humble opinion, there is a lot of ridiculous FUD in regards to Blu-ray's future now that Toshiba plans to phase out HD-DVD.

I do see the following:

1) Now that manufacturers don't have to choose between formats and the Profile 1.1 and 2.0 specifications are finalized, the cost of Blu-ray players will start to rapidly drop, especially with new chipsets for console players.

2) I expect the majority Blu-ray discs to use either VC-1 or AVC encoding, especially now that computer workstation power is good enough to do either VC-1 or AVC video encoding fairly quickly; that's the nice thing about the general availability of quad-core CPU's from AMD and Intel at reasonable prices. Also, with VC-1 or AVC encoding, it frees up storage space on the disc so you can put in multilanguage/commentary soundtracks and supplemental features on the same disc. You may see some movies still encoded in MPEG-2, but they will be more carefully mastered to avoid MPEG-2 "aritifacts" in fast-moving motion.

3) I expect many Blu-ray releases--especially big, "epic" movies--to use either Dolby TrueHD or DTA Master Audio lossless audio encoding. Can you imagine the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy with a 7.1 DTS Master Audio soundtrack? :D Conventional Dolby Digital and DTS audio soundtracks will still be used on many modern movies, older movies, and TV shows.
 
Folks,

In my humble opinion, there is a lot of ridiculous FUD in regards to Blu-ray's future now that Toshiba plans to phase out HD-DVD.

I do see the following:

1) Now that manufacturers don't have to choose between formats and the Profile 1.1 and 2.0 specifications are finalized, the cost of Blu-ray players will start to rapidly drop, especially with new chipsets for console players.

2) I expect the majority Blu-ray discs to use either VC-1 or AVC encoding, especially now that computer workstation power is good enough to do either VC-1 or AVC video encoding fairly quickly; that's the nice thing about the general availability of quad-core CPU's from AMD and Intel at reasonable prices. Also, with VC-1 or AVC encoding, it frees up storage space on the disc so you can put in multilanguage/commentary soundtracks and supplemental features on the same disc. You may see some movies still encoded in MPEG-2, but they will be more carefully mastered to avoid MPEG-2 "aritifacts" in fast-moving motion.

3) I expect many Blu-ray releases--especially big, "epic" movies--to use either Dolby TrueHD or DTA Master Audio lossless audio encoding. Can you imagine the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy with a 7.1 DTS Master Audio soundtrack? :D Conventional Dolby Digital and DTS audio soundtracks will still be used on many modern movies, older movies, and TV shows.

Cool feature is that AVCHD video cameras can output AVC files via a dedicated DVD burner playable on a Blu-Ray player. Also, I use SD flash via PS3 and a Panasonic DMP-BD30K right out of the camera. Big problem is lack of AVCHD output from apple video apps; yet another reason for waiting for a Blu-Ray burner BTO.
 
iTunes is the reason SACD failed...

:confused: You lost me there. How did that happen again? I mean, a format that was designed to give higher fidelity than CD, and which basically had its entire purpose justified to the public as such failed because of iTunes, which is not even in the same market?

SACD failed because CDs were just good enough to make it not worthwhile for most to buy SACDs. Draconian copy protection schemes didn't help. You could say that the CD was the reason for SACD to fail, but saying iTunes was the reason is quite a stretch.
 
Yes, just like they force us to buy a PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii to be able to play all games.

But most people are not interested in playing "all the games". And the three are a bit different from each other. But with HD-formats things would be different since all studios release content that people want to see. Same might not apply to consoles. And with consoles the situation is different. We have fans of games made by Nintendo (for example). In movies, we do NOT have fans of movies made by Universal. In consoles and games, people do gather around companies and game-studios, in movies that does not happen.

And let's not forget who started this format war, breaking away from the logical successor to DVD in order to create their own incompatible format.

What makes HD-DVD a "logical successor"? Because it was backed by the DVD-forum? Is your logic so that anything that gets backed by that particular group, should automatically become the new standard? It doesn't quite work that way. And as far as the consumer was concerned, there was no difference between the two when looking from the perspective of the DVD. Systems in both camps could play back DVD's just fine, DVD-players could not play back either format. How exactly was HD-DVD different from that perspective? What benefit does DVD-forum bring?
 
Please stop with the misinformation regarding Blu-Ray.

Blu-Ray players of the first generation, v1.0, will be able to play future Blu-Ray disks quite well, thank you. What you won't get is Bonus View (which is Picture-In-Picture) which arrived with v1.1, and Blu-Ray Live (which is interactivity via the internet) which is upcoming soon in v2.0.

All Blu-Ray players are 1080p while some of the intial HD-DVD players were 1080i.

Not a deal breaker for most people.

Ummm wow. That is known as spin. So you are telling me that people who dropped at minimum of $300, and realistically more like $400 on a BR player won't be able to use all its features, and no one is going to care? Wow. What is the color of the sky in your world? Pink? Brown? Purple? Because here in the real world companies finish a spec for a product before they launch it.
Watch for the class action lawsuits against the various companies as this hits the fan. Mark my words right now...someone is going to get sued.

How exactly was HD-DVD different from that perspective? What benefit does DVD-forum bring?

Other then credibility and a finalized format out of the gates? I guess not much. :rolleyes:
 
Sorry. Noobie question here. But are current MBP DVD drives unable to read Blu Ray discs? Or simply unable to display the higher definition?

Blu-Ray is a completely different beast than DVD. No Apple computer has the ability to view blu-ray discs out of the box.
 
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