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Why is Blu Ray left up to Apple?

N

nick9191

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Feb 17, 2008
3,407
316
Britain
I mean in the sense that it isn't left up to Microsoft. Let me explain.

Windows 7 Home Basic can't even play DVD's out of the box, extra software is required. I believe it could be the same for W7 Business and Enterprise, certainly was for Vista anyway.

And no versions of Windows come with Blu Ray playback capabilities as standard, built into the OS. It's left to third parties.

And obviously Microsoft don't make Blu Ray drives.

So why is the pressure on Apple to incorporate Blu Ray? All new Macs support HDCP via Mini DisplayPort or HDMI. Why not pressure third parties into releasing Blu Ray playback software, and attach a drive via USB/FW or internally in the case of the Mac Pro?

I can understand the whole "Apple makes the whole package" mantra, but if Apple aren't willing to provide then get someone else to do it.

Has anyone released this software yet? If not, if not one single company has, that would suggest there is not enough demand for it. I think people definitely need to realise that MR != All Mac users.
 
Unfortunately the Blu-Ray license requires OS-level changes for copy-protected video playback. Hence the "bag of hurt" comment by Jobs.

Apple doesn't allow software developers the kind of kernel-level access that would be necessary to enable BD playback, so the ball's in Apple's court.
 
Darth.Titan said:
Unfortunately the Blu-Ray license requires OS-level changes for copy-protected video playback. Hence the "bag of hurt" comment by Jobs.

Apple doesn't allow software developers the kind of kernel-level access that would be necessary to enable BD playback, so the ball's in Apple's court.
Click to expand...
Thanks for clearing that up.

Feel a bit stupid now.
 
i think blu ray is really dead now

Hi,

As others have pointed out, the licensing has been the bigger issue for Apple not implementing it, but I also believe that Apple never intended to use. This is my own opinion based on the fact that Apple bought that massive server farm building in NC and the fact that iTunes is a HUGE money maker for Apple. Ppl dload material and buy the products to do that.

But I always wondered until I saw the report last week that the new iLife might be announced on Sept 1st. Rumour is that iDVD won't be included and if that's truly the case, it means that Apple is leaving hard disc altogether.

Or maybe it means that it will be iBluRay, but I doubt that.

Will be interesting to see where it all goes.

Cheers,
Keebler
 
Darth.Titan said:
Unfortunately the Blu-Ray license requires OS-level changes for copy-protected video playback. Hence the "bag of hurt" comment by Jobs.

Apple doesn't allow software developers the kind of kernel-level access that would be necessary to enable BD playback, so the ball's in Apple's court.
Click to expand...

I remember reading about that a few years ago; IIRC the Blu-Ray decode has to run in ring 0, which is not where Apple wants developers sticking their own code. Ring 0 bugs can easily bring down the whole system. The ring 0 business was so that the code couldn't be interrupted so as to sneak in or copy it to a non-protected device.
 
nick9191 said:
Thanks for clearing that up.

Feel a bit stupid now.
Click to expand...
No, there is no reason to feel stupid. I love my Blu-ray player, but Blu-ray has issues that people don't know about or don't like to talk about. There is the issue of firmware and firmware updates. My Blu-ray player was not capable of playing my Avatar Blu-ray disc when I purchased the movie. The deck needed a firmware update. The deck is supposed to allow updates to be downloaded over the Internet or to be downloaded on your computer and then run from a flash drive. The thing is that I have never figured out how to update directly over the Internet. I have to download a .zip file and then unzip it before I can install the updates from a Flash drive. User-friendly, this is not.

Then there is the issue of Steve Jobs' insistence on control. Quite frankly, I support his position 100%. One of the unspoken security issues in Windows is that many developers insist on opening security holes to install hardware or software. Many legitimate Windows developers behave exactly as we would expect malware developers to behave. Remember the root kits from Sony? This state of affairs is not necessary on Windows. It is not allowed on the Mac. If being forced to watch Blu-ray on my TV while lounging on my sofa is the price that I must pay for security, then it is a price that I am willing to pay.
 
I can play Blu-Ray on my iMac

Cave Man said:
But that's just it, you can play Blu-ray discs on your Mac without the worry of a Blu-ray disc downloading and installing crapware in the OS.
Click to expand...

I'm not really versed in Blu-ray downloading and installing crapware/malware/bloatware, though, it won't happen here anyway.

I do wish it were easier to play a Blu-ray disc directly. It's even ironic that I can play a copy protected disc to my little external 1080p monitor with HDCP via mini-displayport to DVI cable, but when I move/slide the movie more than halfway (yes 50.1%) to my main 27" iMac screen (which is also HDCP supported) the movie halts and says I have to have HDCP. So the HDCP is somewhat in the software also?

The HDCP Master Key has been reversed engineered anyway (back in 2010) and it still is a nuisance. HDCP makes GOOD people bad for trying (technically illegal workarounds) to play content they PAID for, and BAD people (pirates) HEROS for making it a non-issue.
 
Darth.Titan said:
Apple doesn't allow software developers the kind of kernel-level access that would be necessary to enable BD playback
Click to expand...
Not sure what you mean by that. There is a class of S/W typed .kext, which stands for "kernel extension". Many of those things are drivers for hardware, most written by Apple, but there is an entire section in developer documentation for IOKit which involves writing drivers. In one part, they recommend avoiding code that executes in kernel space, but they never actually prohibit such code. There is plenty of documentation on writing for the kernel, and Mach/XNU is all open source, so writing privileged code for Mac OS is far from difficult, much less impossible.

Of course, even that is trivial. It would be simple enough to build a Blu-Ray unit (preferably -RW) with decryption logic built into the hardware - then any necessary kernel code to support reading it would be very minimal.
 
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