Everybody's on board with Blu-Ray...except Apple.
Yet Apple is on the Board of Directors for the Blu-ray Disc Association.
The former HD-DVD camp is all aboard (Universal, Toshiba, Panasonic)...
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Universal Studios to Launch iPhone Features for Blu-ray Discs
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Yet Apple is on the Board of Directors for the Blu-ray Disc Association.
The former HD-DVD camp is all aboard (Universal, Toshiba, Panasonic)...
Why don't they include an iPhone-compatible version of the movie to upload to your computer so we can download it to our iPhones and Touches? Didn't Die Hard 4 have something like this? The second disc wouldn't be Blu-Ray but at least it would be portable.
Makes WAY more sense than rotating 3D models of cars on-screen.
Makes WAY more sense than rotating 3D models of cars on-screen.
Yea, Apple may be on the board, but they've proven with lack of adopt-ability they are just there to save face and not look like the retarded kid in the corner not supporting it (oh wait... guess it's too late for that) and to keep an eye on things. They aren't there for any other reason than to police (possibly even ruin?) Blu-Ray so they can continue to push their overly compressed, poor quality, 16 movie HD selection via iTunes.
Makes little to no sense to be on the Board and none of your products support it several years later. The "Blu-Ray is a big bag of hurt" thing from Jobs was pretty hilarious coming from a company who's notoriously known for restricting and locking users down to what they can do on any Apple product ever made. Irony?
Using the iphone as an enhanced remote is a good idea. A great improvement is commands are custom made for each film. It reminds me of the Atari joystick masks in the 80s for some games. Of course this technology is better.
What disturbs me is that some people still believe people are interested in virtual garages and bonus video in DVD and Bluray disks. Experience shows that a film is a film and people don't care about bonus features that would never sell anyway if it was not packaged as bonus feature.
What disturbs me is that some people still believe people are interested in virtual garages and bonus video in DVD and Bluray disks. Experience shows that a film is a film and people don't care about bonus features that would never sell anyway if it was not packaged as bonus feature.
Are you 'freakin kidding me? Have you even seen and heard Blu-Ray? LMFAO There is *no* comparison between standard DVD and Blu-Ray.
I could care less about this "feature," even it came on standard DVDs. But hey, if others like it, all power to them.
Were you an HD-DVD adopter?
We have a long way to go until downloads replace physical media. (Of any kind)
well, i just don't get it, but maybe this is a good thing for Apple to do.
I really want FULL Apple Mac support, not stopgaps which dont allow you to playback a BD movie on Mac's. I dont need digital copy as much cause it take up storage on my laptop, or tower.
Apple ought to fully embrace Blu-Ray. not do minor things. but at least companies like Universal are going to push the issue and bring more BD to macs
I really want FULL Apple Mac support, not stopgaps which dont allow you to playback a BD movie on Mac's. I dont need digital copy as much cause it take up storage on my laptop, or tower.
Apple ought to fully embrace Blu-Ray. not do minor things. but at least companies like Universal are going to push the issue and bring more BD to macs
apple has alot to do to earn that position, so far most of Apple's progress has been stalled except to advance itunes agenda. sorry Apple needs to adopt BD fully. not stalling this BS.
That's fine. You don't want Blu-Ray.
I do.
If Apple dragged it's overcharging ass into the 21st century and OFFERED BR drives - we could BOTH have what we want.
Universal Figured it out
I think I speak for everyone on the Blu-ray fence when I say this... All we were waiting for was a cumbersome and DRM riddled way to check the stats on some cars in a horrible movie. Googling Toyota Supra or Mitsubishi Evo (I'm just taking a shot in the dark here... I have no idea what cars are in this movie) is way too easy and convenient for every living, breathing human being who has an internet connected blu-ray player and an iPhone.
But really, I'm not on the blu-ray fence. I am into it. The quality of some blu-ray movies is astonishingly better from dvds on a 109" screen. The color depth over dvd alone is worth it. It works for me. That is why I'll be a sad old man on the day I realize I sound like the laserdisc fanatics of the 90's.
That is... I don't think the price of movies is that big an issue right now. Some releases came about from considerable efforts to clean original sources, adding value. It isn't for a lack of BD players. There is likely a huge amount of PS3 owners who haven't bought a single blu-ray. It's not the economy. Blu-ray was around long before this little blip in numbers. It's not because discs and lasers are as antiquated as 8-trac tapes (how old are hard drives now? Magnetic storage is new?). It has nothing to do with format. Who doesn't wan't to store 50gbs on a disc that costs a buck?
It's just that... well no one really sells blu-ray movies. I mean, I'm sure I can find fast and furiest without any trouble, but what about movies that people want to watch? Where do you buy those? Am I the only person who has for two years frequently spent considerable time staring at the BD section at Target only to realize there's nothing worth watching that I don't already own?
I think I speak for everyone on the Blu-ray fence when I say this... All we were waiting for was a cumbersome and DRM riddled way to check the stats on some cars in a horrible movie. Googling Toyota Supra or Mitsubishi Evo (I'm just taking a shot in the dark here... I have no idea what cars are in this movie) is way too easy and convenient for every living, breathing human being who has an internet connected blu-ray player and an iPhone.
But really, I'm not on the blu-ray fence. I am into it. The quality of some blu-ray movies is astonishingly better from dvds on a 109" screen. The color depth over dvd alone is worth it. It works for me. That is why I'll be a sad old man on the day I realize I sound like the laserdisc fanatics of the 90's.
That is... I don't think the price of movies is that big an issue right now. Some releases came about from considerable efforts to clean original sources, adding value. It isn't for a lack of BD players. There is likely a huge amount of PS3 owners who haven't bought a single blu-ray. It's not the economy. Blu-ray was around long before this little blip in numbers. It's not because discs and lasers are as antiquated as 8-trac tapes (how old are hard drives now? Magnetic storage is new?). It has nothing to do with format. Who doesn't wan't to store 50gbs on a disc that costs a buck?
It's just that... well no one really sells blu-ray movies. I mean, I'm sure I can find fast and furiest without any trouble, but what about movies that people want to watch? Where do you buy those? Am I the only person who has for two years frequently spent considerable time staring at the BD section at Target only to realize there's nothing worth watching that I don't already own?
I had a PS3 console which had the Blu-Ray player built in. The player came with the Blu-Ray version of Peter Jackson's King Kong. It looked ok, but hardly a night and day comparison on my 37" HD television. I will concede that a larger, higher quality display might showcase the differences between HD and standard definition, but I am not about to replace my existing collection of movies and the display if standard definition is sufficient. Although it sounds like heresy to all you home theater enthusiasts, there are quite a few people with the same mindset.
I sold the PS3 a few months after getting it (won it as a door prize). Still have my XBOX 360 though. I love running Netflix through it.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't jumped into the Blu-Ray club. I should think anything that shores up the profit margins further in this economy would have been embraced by Cupertino long ago. Perhaps they can't make or buy these drives cheaply enough to make it worth their while? Perhaps they feel the same antipathy towards Sony as I?
When it's time to upgrade my television, we'll see where the technology rests and I'll revisit my opinions on HD entertainment. Maybe by then, the Mini will have a BR drive in it. There's a potential change / upgrade in Home Theater right there.
This is where HD education is really failing on consumers because no one understands it.
I will point this out: If you have a TV less than say 40-46" then HD is pretty much useless for you. You will not really see a big difference in picture quality on a screen that small. Things will look at a big smoother and sharper, but the majority of movies the overall effect will be lost.
Second and most important, it depends on "what" you're watching. Just because it's a Blu-Ray disk does not mean the film was recorded using HD cameras. Blu-Ray disk will help a little with deinterlacing and small artifacts, but if the film wasn't shot in HD then you're not really watching HD. You're merely just watching SD being upconverted.
Try watching something more recent, say Quantum of Solace on a TV larger than yours. Majority of the film was shot in HD and it shows pretty well. Just finished watching The Watchmen on Blu-Ray and that's also a pretty great looking title and there are countless other "more recent" films. Taking movies from years ago and putting them on Blu-Ray doesn't really do much. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 looks ****ing fantastic if you want to see something that's pretty great.
A Vested Interest
You do realize that Apple has a vested interest in not including BD players on Macs. They've invested heavily in the digital downloads route, and the MacBook Air is a definite indication of Apple's desired direction.
Also, BD has bigger problems than I've seen most people acknowledge. Most users aren't like us, they aren't terribly familiar with the latest technology. This is, curiously, the mainstream market that Apple is trying to appeal to. In order to sell tech to this demographic, you have to provide a significant advance over the incumbent technology, not a sustaining advance. DVD offered more space for movie content (it became practical to include Director's Commentary, etc.), offered significant visual improvements over VHS, the ability to skip between chapters, and, perhaps the most important, the seemingly permanence and durability of a disk compared to magnetic tape.
Let's look at BD. More space, but mostly wasted on BD-Live content, not on movie content. Visual improvements that only become available with the purchase of a 50" TV, and then, nowhere nearly as drastic as the clarity difference between DVD and VHS. All the other benefits that DVD had over VHS were a result of a medium change.
I can also think of some more reasons why Apple is less inclined to add BD. For one, from what I can tell, most OS X users rarely use multiple monitors, the exception being content (movie, photo, etc.) professionals, let alone connect their Macs to a large screen TV. Therefore, they remain using the screen size of their included or built-in monitor, all of which are sub-optimal for HD content.
Also, I strongly suspect that most people don't have the space for a 50" TV, let alone a 60" or 70"+ TV. TVs of that size have always been, more or less, novelty products. Also, there's the fact that BD doesn't supply a significant improvement over upconverted DVD for the masses, simply because most people aren't audiophiles or videophiles. It's very easy for people to ascribe their own values to others. What you like, what you look for in a product, aren't necessarily the values others look for in that product. That's why most people are fine with the default EQ settings in iTunes and on their iPods, and why most people are fine with MP3 or AAC compared to FLAC, for instance.
I, for one, hope Apple doesn't add BD, simply because it would not add value for the majority of their customers or potential customers.
You do realize that Apple has a vested interest in not including BD players on Macs. They've invested heavily in the digital downloads route, and the MacBook Air is a definite indication of Apple's desired direction.
Also, BD has bigger problems than I've seen most people acknowledge. Most users aren't like us, they aren't terribly familiar with the latest technology. This is, curiously, the mainstream market that Apple is trying to appeal to. In order to sell tech to this demographic, you have to provide a significant advance over the incumbent technology, not a sustaining advance. DVD offered more space for movie content (it became practical to include Director's Commentary, etc.), offered significant visual improvements over VHS, the ability to skip between chapters, and, perhaps the most important, the seemingly permanence and durability of a disk compared to magnetic tape.
Let's look at BD. More space, but mostly wasted on BD-Live content, not on movie content. Visual improvements that only become available with the purchase of a 50" TV, and then, nowhere nearly as drastic as the clarity difference between DVD and VHS. All the other benefits that DVD had over VHS were a result of a medium change.
I can also think of some more reasons why Apple is less inclined to add BD. For one, from what I can tell, most OS X users rarely use multiple monitors, the exception being content (movie, photo, etc.) professionals, let alone connect their Macs to a large screen TV. Therefore, they remain using the screen size of their included or built-in monitor, all of which are sub-optimal for HD content.
Also, I strongly suspect that most people don't have the space for a 50" TV, let alone a 60" or 70"+ TV. TVs of that size have always been, more or less, novelty products. Also, there's the fact that BD doesn't supply a significant improvement over upconverted DVD for the masses, simply because most people aren't audiophiles or videophiles. It's very easy for people to ascribe their own values to others. What you like, what you look for in a product, aren't necessarily the values others look for in that product. That's why most people are fine with the default EQ settings in iTunes and on their iPods, and why most people are fine with MP3 or AAC compared to FLAC, for instance.
I, for one, hope Apple doesn't add BD, simply because it would not add value for the majority of their customers or potential customers.
Are you two really trying to claim that you need a 40" to 50" screen to see the difference between 480i and 1080p ??? That's funny.
The 480i screen is 307Kpixel. A 13" MBP screen is 1024Kpixel. Do you really believe that the 2074Kpixel 1080p image won't look better scaled down to 1024Kpixel, better than the 307Kpixel video upscaled to 1024Kpixel?
Not optimal, but better than 480i !
I can almost understand someone saying "I'll choose not to get the Blu-ray BTO option", but to say "I, for one, hope Apple doesn't add BD..." doesn't make sense for the platform.
Hey thanks for the explanation. It makes sense to me. But I do beg to differ on the utility of HD on my 37". I get HD channels via my cable provider and shows / broadcasts on these channels are far superior in resolution and quality over normal, standard-definition broadcast channels.
For now, I find no compelling reason to upgrade the current setup - until the display gives up the ghost.
I was going to say the exact same thing. If it's an option (and it almost certainly would be optional at first), then what's the big deal? You don't want it, don't get it.
But from my perspective, it's another way for Apple to differentiate it's product line. I'm wondering if they're holding out for the BD-R and BD-RE drives to come down in price, not wanting to put only a player in their computers.
Almost all of the BD-ROM drives used in computers are DVD/CD burners - so BD-ROM doesn't imply no optical burner....
Not everyone has broadband. Go outside any metro area (and not very far at that) in the US and the percentage of people who have access to high speed internet drops very quickly. Even in small towns, 3Mbs is considered really fast.
why are people comparing Apple TV with BD again?
It seems Apple is holding out for something from blu-ray. My completely uneducated and uninformed guess is that it is Apple TV related. Of course, Apple will never take over the movie watching world if no one has an Apple TV. No one wants an AppleTV because it doesn't do anything new... and it doesn't do anything well. They need to sell this thing on the level of the iPod for their HD download service to show numbers like iTunes music does. BD players will be $50 in six months, and most people already know someone who owns one. Ubiquity is much closer to BD than anyone in the HD market. Frankly, very few people, it seems, want to pay a couple hundred dollars for the privilege of renting and buying movies from Apple.
Apple can't possibly believe that they have gained significant market saturation to go head to head with blu-ray, but there is a way to get an Apple TV to the masses. If it needs to sell like iPod, it needs to act like iPod. iPod let you take your existing libraries and collections and transfer them in as high a quality as you wanted, lossless even, to the device seamlessly. These were the selling points, long before ITMS existed: Portability, Fast upload (compared to the USB 1 players of the time), and ease of use. Apple TV probably doesn't need to be portable, but it does need to TRANSFER EXISTING LIBRARIES, and it needs to do that transparently. No one would have bought an iPod if all content had to be purchased from ITMS, and nothing could be transferred from CD (or, frankly, Napster... the real Napster that is).
Everyone's mom knows that blu-ray won't let this happen. The day will never come where you can pop a blu-ray into your mac, and transfer its contents to an Apple TV. Everyone knows Apple can be insufferable when they don't get their way. Hence, a stand off.
This will end like the USB2 standoff, or the DVI standoff, or the DVD DL standoff, or the PCI standoff, or the 30 years intel standoff, the 30-year multi-button mouse standoff, the 2.5 volt ram standoff, the full-sized keyboard standoff, the audio line in standoff (which has resurfaced), the ATA standoff, the DDR standoff... I can go on and on (I've been using Apples for a while now). Apple will try to shove it down our throats 2 years later, acting like they were the first to have it. We Will be so privileged to have it; others will stare with envy.
And when they lose this one, maybe the first place you will see a blu-ray drive is in an Apple TV, along with a HD DVR and cable card slot. That is, if they ever plan on selling these things.
It seems Apple is holding out for something from blu-ray. My completely uneducated and uninformed guess is that it is Apple TV related. Of course, Apple will never take over the movie watching world if no one has an Apple TV. No one wants an AppleTV because it doesn't do anything new... and it doesn't do anything well. They need to sell this thing on the level of the iPod for their HD download service to show numbers like iTunes music does. BD players will be $50 in six months, and most people already know someone who owns one. Ubiquity is much closer to BD than anyone in the HD market. Frankly, very few people, it seems, want to pay a couple hundred dollars for the privilege of renting and buying movies from Apple.
Apple can't possibly believe that they have gained significant market saturation to go head to head with blu-ray, but there is a way to get an Apple TV to the masses. If it needs to sell like iPod, it needs to act like iPod. iPod let you take your existing libraries and collections and transfer them in as high a quality as you wanted, lossless even, to the device seamlessly. These were the selling points, long before ITMS existed: Portability, Fast upload (compared to the USB 1 players of the time), and ease of use. Apple TV probably doesn't need to be portable, but it does need to TRANSFER EXISTING LIBRARIES, and it needs to do that transparently. No one would have bought an iPod if all content had to be purchased from ITMS, and nothing could be transferred from CD (or, frankly, Napster... the real Napster that is).
Everyone's mom knows that blu-ray won't let this happen. The day will never come where you can pop a blu-ray into your mac, and transfer its contents to an Apple TV. Everyone knows Apple can be insufferable when they don't get their way. Hence, a stand off.
This will end like the USB2 standoff, or the DVI standoff, or the DVD DL standoff, or the PCI standoff, or the 30 years intel standoff, the 30-year multi-button mouse standoff, the 2.5 volt ram standoff, the full-sized keyboard standoff, the audio line in standoff (which has resurfaced), the ATA standoff, the DDR standoff... I can go on and on (I've been using Apples for a while now). Apple will try to shove it down our throats 2 years later, acting like they were the first to have it. We Will be so privileged to have it; others will stare with envy.
And when they lose this one, maybe the first place you will see a blu-ray drive is in an Apple TV, along with a HD DVR and cable card slot. That is, if they ever plan on selling these things.
My guess is that neither of you have even watched a bluray on a tv less than 40". I have a ps3 so I can choose to output 480, 720, or 1080 on my 37" 1080p tv. I can GUARANTEE that in a blind test I can see the diffence between 480p and 1080p. Maybe you guys are old so your vision has worsened or something. I'm only 20 and have near perfect vision. You guys seem somewhat like Luddites, which is weird since were on a tech forum.
That's exacty the case where I live.