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What's the ETA on blu rays drive's on macbooks?

gwsat said:
Wow! Often wrong but never in doubt. The issue isn't whether the PQ of a BD is better than that of a DVD, even on a laptop, it is. Thus, we agree that there is a difference. We disagree, though, over whether that difference is significant enough to make it sensible at this early day for Apple to ditch DVD in favor of BD. Your use of screen caps is unconvincing to me. There is no debate more impossible to resolve than PQ and using screen caps to support such an argument is the last refuge of scoundrels, it seems to me. Ultimately, we disagree about this ultimately unresolvable issue. Apple, not you, will decide when, if ever to add BD drives to its laptops. Live with it. I am moving on to more fertile fields. :rolleyes:, back atcha.
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What do you mean by "early"? The first laptops with BR-drives were available, what, three years ago? The HD-wars are over, Blu-Ray won, and it's here to stay. It is anything but "early".
And I have no idea what you're on about regarding the screenshots wikoogle posted. They clearly show that there's a vast and immediately perceptible difference between DVD and BR-quality. So yes, there would be a very noticeable increase in quality if Apple offered BR-drives in their laptops, even more so if they offered FullHD-displays (which are already available from pretty much every other manufacturer...)
 
Tyrion said:
What do you mean by "early"? The first laptops with BR-drives were available, what, three years ago? The HD-wars are over, Blu-Ray won, and it's here to stay. It is anything but "early".
And I have no idea what you're on about regarding the screenshots wikoogle posted. They clearly show that there's a vast and immediately perceptible difference between DVD and BR-quality. So yes, there would be a very noticeable increase in quality if Apple offered BR-drives in their laptops, even more so if they offered FullHD-displays (which are already available from pretty much every other manufacturer...)
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BrerBear said:
"Early day"? I bought a Dell laptop with Blu-ray for a relative in late 2008. Apple is way late to this game.
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I have had a BD player for more than two years. Nevertheless, Blu-ray still is in its "early days" in terms of its development. The combination of highly complex technology and the studios' incredibly restrictive copy protection schemes have created a minefield of potential problems. We can never know from one day to the next whether a given BD will play on a given BD player.
 
Gwsat,

You really have no idea what you are talking about. bluray vs dvd on a laptop is a significant picture quality difference, 480p upconvert is not even remotely close. Even more so due to view distance of a laptop (not the opposite). Go to avsforum's projector section and read up the basics first on view distance and image quality. The only time a bluray and dvd will be similar in pq is if the max resolution of the screen is 704x480 (480), which none of them are.

also bluray playback has not changed since day 1 of release, any legal bluray disc will playback on all legal players, the older player may not support the internet features or widgets, but all of them will play the movie just fine.

it will be a big disappoint if the new mbp - a media focused laptop, to not have a bluray drive upgrade option.
 
I definitely think Blu-Ray should be an option on all 3 macbook pros.

But, when I looked at the new Sony Vaio Z, I noticed it is a $500 option. No way I could pay that much for it.

Definitely should be an option for those that want it though.
 
gagaliya said:
Gwsat,

You really have no idea what you are talking about. bluray vs dvd on a laptop is a significant picture quality difference, 480p upconvert is not even remotely close.
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Reread my posts in which I agreed that the PQ of BDs is superior to DVDs. My point is and has been that the difference in PQ on a small laptop screen is small enough and the potential problems with the immature Blu-ray technology so numerous that Apple's decision not to add BD drives to its laptops makes sense. Anyway, any discussion of PQ requires subjective evaluation. As disagreements about PQ always are, ours is unresolvable. Live with it.
 
gwsat said:
Reread my posts in which I agreed that the PQ of BDs is superior to DVDs. My point is and has been that the difference in PQ on a small laptop screen is small enough and the potential problems with the immature Blu-ray technology so numerous that Apple's decision not to add BD drives to its laptops makes sense. Anyway, any discussion of PQ requires subjective evaluation. As disagreements about PQ always are, ours is unresolvable. Live with it.
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I don't understand how you can argue that the difference in picture quality on a laptop screen is smaller than on large displays.

This is not about subjective evaluations of picture quality. This is about your analytic justifications for why the quality difference on laptop screens is small in the first place.

Your reasoning goes: the larger the display, the more noticeable the picture quality difference. Thus the difference will matter a lot on a 50" display, not so much on a 30" display, and very little on a 17" display.

That's all good and reasonable, but here's the key thing: those statements only make sense if all other factors are held constant. The most critical variable that needs to be held constant is viewing distance. If viewing distance differs, then screen size alone is meaningless.

This is because screen size by itself is not the right measurement to use when trying to figure out how clear an image is to the eye. The right measurement to use is view angle from the eye to the display. The reason is really simple mathematics. (To keep this simple I'll use screen size as arc length to avoid doing any trigonometry, but since to illustrate this point I don't need much accuracy this shouldn't matter.) Let's say that for a 30" display, a person with 20/20 vision can sit at most 60" from it to discern the smallest details (i.e. the pixels) on the display. Now what if the person moves to 100" from the display? Can the person still discern all the details on that 30" display? Of course not, this is intuitively obvious. What display size is needed at 100" then? Let's find the view angle at 60". Taking 30" display size as the arc length, the view angle is 30"/60" = 0.5 radians or 28.6 degrees. At 100" then, the display size needed to maintain the same view angle is 100" * 0.5 = 50". You need a 50" display at 100" to still discern all the detail. Now let's find what is the maximum viewing distance to have the same view angle for a 17" display. It is 17" / 0.5 = 34". This means that as long as you view the 17" display from a distance of less than 2' 10", you will be able to discern as much detail as if you were viewing a 50" screen at 100". This is of course just a rough estimate, but it still serves to show that at distances from which people typically view laptop screens, the amount of detail matters just as much as viewing a 50" HDTV at reasonable distances.

It's one thing to say that based on your experience this resolution difference does not matter as much on small laptop screens. That is a subjective evaluation and no one will be able to dispute you on that. But it's another thing when you say that the small screen size somehow has to do with whether the resolution difference matters. That line of reasoning is faulty, the screen size does not tell us anything about whether the resolution matters more or less. Only by taking into account both screen size and viewing distance, or more appropriately, just view angle, can you say anything about discerning differences between resolutions.
 
gwsat said:
the potential problems with the immature Blu-ray technology so numerous that Apple's decision not to add BD drives to its laptops makes sense.
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What "numerous problems" with bluray technology are you talking about exactly? you put a bluray disc into a bluray player, and it plays the movie..since day ONE....just like dvd does. And why do you keep saying it's an immature technology? almost every single major-studio movie now are released on both bluray and dvd.

again what are you talking about, just making up stuff as you go?
 
I personally think that physical media (of all types) is dying. I think this will become obvious over the next several years... especially as the population begins to first tolerate, then accept, and finally value cloud computing.

For me:

1) I still want an optical drive for a desktop computer (iMac or MacPro). I suppose that BluRay would be slightly better, but not by much. I suspect in about 5 years... I will be happy to have no optical media even in a desktop.

2) Any optical drive is the last thing that I want in a laptop today. For me, it only adds bulk and weight, and offers zero value.

/Jim
 
flynz4 said:
I personally think that physical media (of all types) is dying. I think this will become obvious over the next several years... especially as the population begins to first tolerate, then accept, and finally value cloud computing.

For me:

1) I still want an optical drive for a desktop computer (iMac or MacPro). I suppose that BluRay would be slightly better, but not by much. I suspect in about 5 years... I will be happy to have no optical media even in a desktop.

2) Any optical drive is the last thing that I want in a laptop today. For me, it only adds bulk and weight, and offers zero value.

/Jim
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Metered Billing.
 
flynz4 said:
I personally think that physical media (of all types) is dying. I think this will become obvious over the next several years... especially as the population begins to first tolerate, then accept, and finally value cloud computing.

For me:

1) I still want an optical drive for a desktop computer (iMac or MacPro). I suppose that BluRay would be slightly better, but not by much. I suspect in about 5 years... I will be happy to have no optical media even in a desktop.

2) Any optical drive is the last thing that I want in a laptop today. For me, it only adds bulk and weight, and offers zero value.

/Jim
Click to expand...

Ever considered the possibility that the MBP might serve as a "desktop" to some people? I consider a "pro"-laptop to be a desktop replacement.
 
Tyrion said:
Ever considered the possibility that the MBP might serve as a "desktop" to some people? I consider a "pro"-laptop to be a desktop replacement.
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I know once I upgrade to the whenever-the-hell-Apple-feels-like-it-MBP, it'll be my "desktop replacement" for this antiquated PC I built like 6 years ago...
 
gwsat said:
For viewing discs on a laptop screen it seems to me that a built in BD player would not do that much. A DVD can be upconverted from 480p to whatever a laptop's maximum resolution is. That's going to look very close to as good on a 17 inch or less screen as a BD would anyway. Among home theater hobbyists, the rule of thumb for an HDTV is that bigger is always better. You won't get the full impact of the startling superiority of a BD's image on any screen much smaller than 50 inches. Right now, there is no way to get the full benefit of a BD's 1080p images and HD audio outside of a well equipped home theater system, or so it seems to me. For that reason, I see few, if any, practical applications for a BD player-burner in a laptop.
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exactly, people say that 1080p on a 32" TV is a waste, never mind on a 13" or 15" laptop!
 
I don't care about Blu Ray myself, but I think Apple should include it as an OPTION and make the OS capable of playing them. Let people decide for themselves if they want it, and let them pay dearly and make Apple more money. If I buy a Mac with an optical drive, there is no way I want an outdated worthless SuperDrive. I would pay whatever it costs to have the most current technology even though I don't own a single Blu Ray disk.

I am sick of Apple deciding what I want in my computers, phone, iPod, and iPad. I want Flash on my iPad, I don't care what Jobs says about battery life. I want Flash on my iPhone and I want to multi-task on it too! I want Apple to give access to APIs to make Adobe's Flash run as well on my Mac within OS X as it does on my Mac when running Windows 7! This isn't like we're asking Apple to give away anything, let people buy every option and make money on it with high margins.

Blu Ray may only be three years old, but if people want to run a Blu Ray disk on their $2200 MBP or $10,000 Mac Pro, shouldn't they be able to pay for the access to it? Even make it a "pro" feature, but give people the option. If MB, MBA, Mac mini buyers want to use it, let them buy an external drive for it... BUT GIVE EVERYONE WITH OS X THE ABILITY TO PLAY BLU RAY ON THEIR MAC!!! Show a little respect to your customers, Apple!
 
Scottsdale said:
I don't care about Blu Ray myself, but I think Apple should include it as an OPTION and make the OS capable of playing them. Let people decide for themselves if they want it, and let them pay dearly and make Apple more money. If I buy a Mac with an optical drive, there is no way I want an outdated worthless SuperDrive. I would pay whatever it costs to have the most current technology even though I don't own a single Blu Ray disk.

I am sick of Apple deciding what I want in my computers, phone, iPod, and iPad. I want Flash on my iPad, I don't care what Jobs says about battery life. I want Flash on my iPhone and I want to multi-task on it too! I want Apple to give access to APIs to make Adobe's Flash run as well on my Mac within OS X as it does on my Mac when running Windows 7! This isn't like we're asking Apple to give away anything, let people buy every option and make money on it with high margins.

Blu Ray may only be three years old, but if people want to run a Blu Ray disk on their $2200 MBP or $10,000 Mac Pro, shouldn't they be able to pay for the access to it? Even make it a "pro" feature, but give people the option. If MB, MBA, Mac mini buyers want to use it, let them buy an external drive for it... BUT GIVE EVERYONE WITH OS X THE ABILITY TO PLAY BLU RAY ON THEIR MAC!!! Show a little respect to your customers, Apple!
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Agree. They have been making some BS choices with their hardware recently trying to turn their computer line into iPhones
 
Eddyisgreat said:
Metered Billing.
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He is right.

The only reason you get unlimited bandwidth on data usage right now is because ISPs know most people will only browse the web and check there mail with a little bit of downloading mp3s and streaming flash on the side. Even online gaming does not use "that much" bandwidth. Now if you had hundreds of thousands of people downloading 25GB BD movies everyday day then you would certainty see a bandwidth meltdown.

And it is not just the ISPs but also the server. Did anyone remember trying to download the Halo 3 beta on xbox live? A huge spike of traffic on lets say black friday would be enough to bring the whole digital grind off-line.

Like they say be careful for what you wish for because you may just get it.

P.S. Mac are supposed to be "High-End" computers. It is ridiculous they don't come with a BD drive.
 
student_trap said:
exactly, people say that 1080p on a 32" TV is a waste, never mind on a 13" or 15" laptop!
Click to expand...

That's just not true, if you sit at the correct distance 1080p looks great whatever the screen size its on. Its just one of these myths that circulates aroudn the web. As a professional photographer i'm more aware than most people about resolution and the general lack of understanding about it.

My camera is 18mp, for arguments sake if i print it out at 300dpi and that ends up being an A2 print it'll looks great three feet away. If i print it on a 60' advertising hoarding it'll still look great a hundred feet away, in fact it'll look exactly the same.

If the screen takes up 50% of your field of view and is 1080p you'll see the same detail if that's a 17" screen up close or a 50" screen across the other side of a large room.
 
To everyone saying physical media is dead, there is currently no physical way of downloading 1080p movies off the internet legally, you can only pirate. So without BD playback/burning possibilities you are SOL on a mac.

Bluray has been out for 4 years and it is still going strong. While digital downloads are indeed the future, it wont be widespread for at least another 5 years. So the fact is apple is ignoring a 10+ year lifespan for hd optical media all because of their pathetic itunes movie store.
 
Streethawk said:
That's just not true, if you sit at the correct distance 1080p looks great whatever the screen size its on. Its just one of these myths that circulates aroudn the web. As a professional photographer i'm more aware than most people about resolution and the general lack of understanding about it.

My camera is 18mp, for arguments sake if i print it out at 300dpi and that ends up being an A2 print it'll looks great three feet away. If i print it on a 60' advertising hoarding it'll still look great a hundred feet away, in fact it'll look exactly the same.

If the screen takes up 50% of your field of view and is 1080p you'll see the same detail if that's a 17" screen up close or a 50" screen across the other side of a large room.
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Thanks for the info - its good to hear especially after spending the extra for a 1080p tv (as opposed to 720p) yesterday!

However, I think the idea is that it doesn't make much difference if your sofa is the same distance away, I wouldn't wan to be super close to the tv to see the extra quality.
 
gagaliya said:
What "numerous problems" with bluray technology are you talking about exactly? you put a bluray disc into a bluray player, and it plays the movie..since day ONE....just like dvd does. And why do you keep saying it's an immature technology? almost every single major-studio movie now are released on both bluray and dvd.

again what are you talking about, just making up stuff as you go?
Click to expand...
Your ignorance is showing, partner. BDs characteristically have MUCH slower load times than DVDs. Whether a newly released BD will play on a given drive on a given day is a crapshoot. That's why firmware updates on BD players are so frequent. Finally, the majority of BDs can't remember where they stopped if you have to interrupt play in the middle of a movie. And the beat goes on.

In a home theater environment, the PQ of a 1080p BD, watched on a 50 inch or larger plasma HDTV or on a 100 inch plus screen via an HD projector, is dramatically superior to even an upconverted DVD. Thus, the hassles associated with BDs are worth dealing with. On a laptop, however, not so much.

Don't get me wrong, if Apple adds a BD drive to its Macbook Pro lineup somewhere down the line, I'll no doubt buy one. In the meanwhile, however, I really feel as if I'm not missing that much.

student_trap said:
exactly, people say that 1080p on a 32" TV is a waste, never mind on a 13" or 15" laptop!
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say that 1080p is a waste on a 32 inch display in a home theater environment, especially if it is used with an audio system that can reproduce a BD's HD soundtrack. Nevertheless, the smaller the display, the less dramatic the difference in PQ between BDs and upconverted DVDs. I can't understand why so many posters have let the lack of a BD drive on a laptop become such a passionate issue for them. On a 17 inch, or smaller, display, a BD's small to moderate improvement in PQ brings with it all the hassles of today's BD technology. Too many of those who have been the most strident here have shown no signs of having any real experience with home theater and don't understand or are willing to overlook the problems BDs have but DVDs are free of. I have to conclude that most of them just want a BD drive in their new computer for the bragging rights. Why in God's name would anybody care about watching BD movies on a laptop's small screen with two channel audio? It beats me.
 
flynz4 said:
I personally think that physical media (of all types) is dying. I think this will become obvious over the next several years... especially as the population begins to first tolerate, then accept, and finally value cloud computing.

For me:

1) I still want an optical drive for a desktop computer (iMac or MacPro). I suppose that BluRay would be slightly better, but not by much. I suspect in about 5 years... I will be happy to have no optical media even in a desktop.

2) Any optical drive is the last thing that I want in a laptop today. For me, it only adds bulk and weight, and offers zero value.

/Jim
Click to expand...


If you dont watch movies on your laptop then yes there is no point for a bluray. But for those of us who use laptop to watch movies while travelling (on a plane, in a car etc..), it is a very important feature.

Yes you can stream the movies, copy it onto usb first etc... but it does not beat putting a disc into a laptop and just play, without having to deal with all the work of downloading movie, copy it to usb etc.. not to mention bluray movie pq is much better.
 
gwsat said:
Your ignorance is showing, partner. BDs characteristically have MUCH slower load times than DVDs. Whether a newly released BD will play on a given drive on a given day is a crapshoot. That's why firmware updates on BD players are so frequent. Finally, the majority of BDs can't remember where they stopped if you have to interrupt play in the middle of a movie. And the beat goes on

In a home theater environment, the PQ of a 1080p BD, watched on a 50 inch or larger plasma HDTV or on a 100 inch plus screen via an HD projector, is dramatically superior to even an upconverted DVD. Thus, the hassles associated with BDs are worth dealing with. On a laptop, however, not so much.
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This is like talking to a wall, if you insist on saying a dog is a cat, there is no point keep going, so this will be my last response to you.

The BD firmware update is to support the additional internet features on the BD disc, you never have to update the firmware just to playback a BD movie.

Stop arguing and go understand the relationship between view distance + screen size vs human eye's perceived picture quality. On the laptop, yes the screen is smaller but you are also sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT one feet away.

As to the rest of complains, they are either flatout wrong or just nonsense (a few extra sec load time for a 90min movie?). Do you even have a bluray player.

man some of you mac users really are not that bright...
 
There is a lot of ignorance in this thread regarding the benefits of watching higher resolution movies on a laptop - and yes there ARE benefits.

It's all about viewing angle people. A THX certified movie theater must yield a viewing angle of 36 degrees or better from the back row. Similarly, people who build home theaters typically recommend a seating distance of 1.5x the screen WIDTH in inches (not the screen diagonal).

For example, I have a 106" projection screen (92" wide) and sit around 11.5 feet (138 inches) from it. This is 1.5x the screen width and yields a viewing angle of 37 degrees.

A 17" laptop screen positioned 2 feet from your eyes yields a 34 degree viewing angle which is roughly equivalent to my 106" screen when viewed from 11.5 ft. Assuming they both used the same resolution (full 1080p), the picture should look roughly the same if the viewing angles are the same.

No, there is no benefit to 1080p on a 32" screen or even a 50" screen when viewed from a typical distance of 9+ feet away. However, when sitting 3-4 feet from it (not that you would normally do this), the benefits of a 1080p picture (Blu-Ray) over a 480p one (DVD) become quite apparent. Having a laptop on your lap 2 feet from your eyes is no different.

Here's a viewing angle calculator which most home theater enthusiasts use:
http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html
 
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