Where the heck is Blu Ray?

[SnowLeopard2008]

Apple will include Blu-ray drives in their laptops when the drives allow the laptops to have longer than 30 minutes of battery life.

Because that's what Blu-ray does right now. It's a useless power hog. Apple cares more about power consumption than features; hence, inch-thick notebooks. There will not be Blu-ray in an Apple notebook until the drives allow two hours of battery life. Plain and simple. At this point, Apple will include a feature that allows you to shut off the drive itself to save power and get your battery life back to the usable 5 hours of current notebooks.

spoken true as mud. and blu-ray is the technology equivalent of dead. it's very costly and offers little in return. and as the MB air is going, ppl want digital, not physical. sony is just following the trend of sticking more stuff on the same disc. not so smart.

if you dont mind me asking, why the hell do you need that intense of a laptop? :S

 

[26139]

If FCS is superior then why does Avid (their Adrenaline systems and stuff) still have the most market share.

If Mac OS X is superior, why does Windows have market share? The quality of something isn't dependent on how many people buy/use it.

 

[Tallest Skil]

If Mac OS X is superior, why does Windows have market share? The quality of something isn't dependent on how many people buy/use it.

Speak for yourself. I keep getting my Bugatti Veyron confused with everyone else's in the parking garage.

 

[26139]

Oh...

Blu ray is NOT the future, it's simply a stop gap between DVDs and total digital delivery.

DVD was a hit because it completely changed the way we watched, stored, purchased and thought of movies. Blu ray just made that part a little better.

Why would I want to haul around ten blu ray discs to watch movies on my laptop when I can download (or rip) a dvd movie? If I had a 70" screen with surround sound, Blu ray would be a no brainer. 13-17" with headphones? I'll take a one gig DVD rip every single time.

And blu ray is worthless for data storage and backup, too. Hard and flash drives are cheaper and smaller than ever before. Blu ray is too fragile to stand up to the abuses I put my hard drives through.

 

[Super Intendo]

Unless the telecoms get their way and net neutrality becomes a thing of the past. Throttled speeds, forced a la carte websites, and sites, once free, that have become pay-per-view.

HA! Please tell me you dont actually think that will happen!

It only takes one company to not change their policy and the whole plan falls to ****. The only way it could ever happen is through the government, and that wont happen.

 

[stainlessliquid]

spoken true as mud. and blu-ray is the technology equivalent of dead. it's very costly and offers little in return. and as the MB air is going, ppl want digital, not physical. sony is just following the trend of sticking more stuff on the same disc. not so smart.

DVD was expensive when it first came out, now look at it. What is it about the MB Air that people want? One of the main complaints about it is the lack of a disc drive. It seems to me that people dont just want a disc drive, they need it. Just because Apple makes something doesnt mean people want it.

And blu ray is worthless for data storage and backup, too. Hard and flash drives are cheaper and smaller than ever before. Blu ray is too fragile to stand up to the abuses I put my hard drives through.

Flash drives arent useful for backup, they are so small and expensive youd have to be out of your mind to use them for anything other than transfering files around, plus they are only slightly more reliable than floppy disks. HDD's are a decent solution but you cant purchase 240gb HDD's at $15 a piece like you can with DVD-R bundles. When Bluray becomes cheap like DVD's are then they will be far more useful for permanent backup than HDD's. Optical media is dirt cheap and will always be ideal for archiving files.

Blu ray is NOT the future, it's simply a stop gap between DVDs and total digital delivery.

In that case digital downloads are not the future either. Something else will come along after it thats more effecient and much faster. Like HD on demand tv with an extensive library of titles.

The USA is a good 5-10 years away from HD downloads going mainstream. Most people could never DREAM of streaming DVD quality stuff right now with their internet connection. I have no idea why people think movie downloads will hit mainstream any day now, it is an extremely long ways away, Bluray will enjoy a healthy 5+ years before movie downloads even begin to be a decent substitution for most people.

What is likely to happen, probably inevitable, is that cable companies will start throttling video downloads to the point that they are a pain to use so that people will end up using on demand instead. Its the american way.

 

[heatmiser]

If Mac OS X is superior, why does Windows have market share? The quality of something isn't dependent on how many people buy/use it.

Does this only apply when referring to Windows, or would you allow the same assertion with the iPod vs the Zune? :^)

 

[26139]

Dude...

Does this only apply when referring to Windows, or would you allow the same assertion with the iPod vs the Zune? :^)

I simply said that the quality of the product isn't dependent on its popularity and I certainly wasn't saying that the smaller market share something has, the better it is. DVDs aren't better than blu ray, but for many reasons, they dominate the market. Hondas aren't higher quality than BMWs, but more people own them. I could go on and on, but this wasn't meant to be a Mac vs Windows debate.

You can't seriously take what I said and apply it to the iPod vs Zune debate. I mean...really? That's a stretch.

 

[26139]

In that case digital downloads are not the future either. Something else will come along after it thats more effecient and much faster. Like HD on demand tv with an extensive library of titles.

Uh...isn't this the same as downloading? You're just downloading to a different device from a different place.

I still don't think Blu ray offers enough of an advantage over DVD to take over for it.

 

[trainguy77]

This would also mean you would need a HDCP compliant screen and GPU.

 

[Wolfpup]

Riiight. How many sales, yours? I SERIOUSLY doubt that more than 1% of Apple buyers would ever NOT buy from Apple solely because of the lack of a blu ray player. I don't, of course, know this any better than you do, however.

I'd guess it's WAY higher than 1% at this point, but yeah, who knows. But again, not including something just because they're not losing the majority of their sales yet isn't a reason not to include it.

And why would they rush to get blu ray drives on the market? How many new releases don't out on both DVD and blu ray?

That doesn't make any sense. No one is buying Blu Ray because they can't get something on DVD.

 

[Tallest Skil]

That doesn't make any sense. No one is buying Blu Ray because they can't get something on DVD.

That's what he's saying. That second sentence of yours is also good on its own. So few people even care that it's still irrelevant.

 

[stainlessliquid]

Uh...isn't this the same as downloading? You're just downloading to a different device from a different place.

I still don't think Blu ray offers enough of an advantage over DVD to take over for it.

If you call watching regular tv downloading because you are reciving information then I guess so. In that case you could also call watching a bluray "downloading" as well since you are downloading information from a disc to another machine..

It will take over eventually. For many consumer reasons and for many economical reasons. As HDTV's become more popular then more consumers will get bluray instead of DVD since SD looks like ass on an HDTV. And you can be sure companies will not continue to lower the costs of DVD players and reduce their margins further, they will adopt bluray and phase out DVD by force if they have to so they can make more money by raising prices again.

 

[Wolfpup]

That's what he's saying. That second sentence of yours is also good on its own. So few people even care that it's still irrelevant.

Huh? No, people ARE buying Blu Ray, but they're not buying it because they can't get something on DVD-that has NOTHING to do with why they're buying it, same as in 1996 with DVD.

 

[barijazz]

why the hell is everyone ignoring data blu ray disks. just saying.

also handbrake + blu ray + apple t.v. = blu ray without having to buy a blu ray box

 

[Chronimac]

Blu-Ray discs have massive storage in comparison to DVD's. How could you say they're is no real advantage? Not to mention a movie buff who has all the hit movies on blu-ray for his home theater might want to be able to watch them on the go without having to buy dvd or digital copies of the same movies.

People want only-digital. But downloading a blu-ray quality movie would be unbearable so for the time being blu-ray is the future.

 

[dukebound85]

DVDs aren't better than blu ray, but for many reasons, they dominate the market.

lol ones past tech and ones the new tech. blu ray will dominate the market in a few years time

you could have said the same about vhs and dvds 10 years ago sheesh


also, i would LOVE to backup all my music and such on a single disc. talk about nice.

 

[millar876]

Dead and buried like the rest of physical media.

Because a 12.5GB film (average for 1080p content on HD-DVD (RIP) and BD) wont take that link to download via my 512k DSL, Geez It takes about 30mins for the NotGeo Wild Cronicles podcast to download and thats tiny, be realistic, the tech won't leap fast enough to skip BD.

Admitedly it might not have ever been that high on SJs adgenda, but with the end of the format war (more of a mild spat realy) they may be working on the SW/HW now, there's quite a bit to do. Its not just a minor update to DVD Player.app, its going to need a major overhaul, to support the codecs involved and menu system (some wierd Java implementation i think). Then theres the whole HW issue, they'll need to produce HDCP stuff, monitors, graphics cards, drives, notebook displays, outpot connectors. and do you realy think apple and its obcession with good design and asthetics is going to rush things, I don't, and i dont think They'll want anyone to watch a BD on a screen with a res lover than 1920x1080, and thats still quite a lot of macs.

 

[stainlessliquid]

heres some food for thought:

The first CD player came out in 1982. It wasnt until the 90's when CD players actually became affordable enough for everyone to go out and replace their tape player. I dont think I got a cd player until 1995 since the last tape I ever owned was made in 94.

The first DVD player came out in 1996. DVD players were very expensive and unpopular until the PS2 came out in 2000 (which I remember was cheaper than most DVD players at the time, or was only barely more expensive). The PS2 launched DVD into the mainstream but it still took awhile before it became a replacement for VHS. I remember that our Blockbuster didnt even carry DVD's until well after the PS2 was released.

The first bluray player came out in 2006. Just 2 years ago. 2 years and the PS3 alone has an install base of 4.3million in the US compared to 1.4million DVD players in 1998. Bluray doesnt seem to be doing that bad after just 2 years.

One thing the DVD had a massive lead in was titles available after 2 years. Mainly because the only thing they had to do to convert VHS movies to DVD was create a title menu. Its not nearly as easy with bluray, since film movies have to be rescanned at 1080p with a lot of touch up work, its costly and not worth it for most old movies.

 

[Wolfpup]

Maybe it depended on where you were? From my perspective DVD was really well established long before the Playstation 2 came out. It probably wasn't a 100% thing until a while after, but everyone I knew had DVD players long before the PS2, and it seems like you couldn't find VHS by that point, at least for rental.

Blu Ray's kind of different, since the PS3 launched basically at the same time as Blu Ray (versus 4 years earlier). Kind of hurt the system at first since it was so expensive to include. In retrospect I'm glad, since it is nice having an early Blu Ray player, and there are an increasing number of games that actually need more than one DVD (probably an increasing issue as this gen of consoles winds along).

EDIT: Come to think of it, this is basically like 1998 for DVD (only worse in the sense that DVD didn't have a competitor). I think '98 was when I got my first DVD player, so I guess I got a DVD and a Blu Ray player at the same points in their lives! I'm hoping Blu Ray lasts indefinitely though, as presumably ATSC and our current TVs will work as is for decades to come.

 

[stainlessliquid]

There were only 5.4 million people in the USA that had a DVD player in 1999. Thats an awfully small percentage of the population. I didnt know anyone with a DVD player, and none of my friends knew people with a DVD player, I dont think I had ever even seen a DVD player in real life back then. The popularity really took off in 2000, with 13 million having one. VHS was still indeed very popular, you could get a VHS player for around 50 bucks but DVD players were going for more than $200 since I know people were comparing the PS2's price as a "deal" compared to the DVD players since "it can also play games".

 

[Wolfpup]

Huh, I guess I just had a totally different experience with it. We're kind of a test market here, and maybe that's why. I can't even remember being able to rent VHS by then, and I think it had been stuck sort of in the back of stores by then (guess stores didn't completely stop carrying it until 2002). I was using it to watch TV though until late 2004 (when both of my recorders died, and there weren't any viable replacements...at least for under $600).

 

[nick9191]

Blu ray is NOT the future, it's simply a stop gap between DVDs and total digital delivery.

DVD was a hit because it completely changed the way we watched, stored, purchased and thought of movies. Blu ray just made that part a little better.

Why would I want to haul around ten blu ray discs to watch movies on my laptop when I can download (or rip) a dvd movie? If I had a 70" screen with surround sound, Blu ray would be a no brainer. 13-17" with headphones? I'll take a one gig DVD rip every single time.

And blu ray is worthless for data storage and backup, too. Hard and flash drives are cheaper and smaller than ever before. Blu ray is too fragile to stand up to the abuses I put my hard drives through.

See thats the point I was trying to make.

 

[neiltc13]

Again we're going to see Blu Ray being adopted because people get it without really knowing it. I'm talking about PlayStation 3. It might be expensive right now but so was PlayStation 2 back in 2001. Now it is the best selling home console of all time and many, many people are using it as a DVD player because it's convenient to have one box under your TV rather than two.

Here in the UK, we've had a service which is similar to video on demand for a very long time. It's called Sky Box Office. Previously you had to order movies by phone, but when Sky Digital came along in the late 1990s it became possible to order movies with your remote control. Yes, it isn't true video on demand but it is very similar. In itself, it is popular but compared to DVD it hasn't made a dent.

There is one very, very good reason for this. People like having physical products. If a digitally distributed movie is going to cost the same (or more!) as buying it on real media then it is going to fail miserably.

What Apple does with movies is really not going to matter. The Apple TV device is a failure because it is one box which people aren't interested in. If it had a built in DVD player or built in Blu Ray drive then it would become a much more interesting prospect, but when I've got to turn off my digital TV box and turn on this other box, swap over the remotes and then get used to a new interface, I can't be bothered. At £199 it can go to hell too.

I believe true VOD will become much more attractive when I don't have to do anything extra or buy anything extra to watch it on my TV. Virgin Media's service is really good because it's there on the digital TV box, but until Sky gets something out there and until there is a free service offering it via DVB-T boxes then it isn't going to make a difference here in the UK.

Sky's only box with internet capability is Sky HD, so when that becomes more widely adopted I think we'll see more services on there. BUT, distribution of HD programming via internet is going to rely entirely on the internet connection people have at home.

Timing is everything and I think that Blu Ray has enough of a window to actually get huge adoption. I see Blu Ray player and disc prices dropping much more quickly than connections capable of distributing similar quality movies becoming widespread.

No matter what though, Apple's influence in this area is going to be absolutely tiny, if any.

 

[sargent bannana]

wow i just read all that

I think Blu-ray will be here for good 5 something years. Untill ISP can give us faster downloads so everything goes digital. Things will not go digital for a while because it will take forever to download bluray quality movie.

Also alot of people (older people) think its better to buy something thats PHYSICAL then digital.

The thing with apple tv is again apple is ahed of there time and apple tv is digital kinda.

To most people the diffrence between blu ray and DVD is nothing its still a disk it all looks the same. thats the thing with DVD it looked totally diffrent then VHS.

I didnt have a DVD player untill i got the PS2 becaus DVD was flippin' expensive. Now a DVD player is like 30 bucks.

Same for Blu ray it will get cheaper.

I hope it goes all digital