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Mar 14, 08 - 04:10 pm Comment from: MikeK

Or it could be the fact that Blu-Ray authoring as a technology is still in it's infantile stages.. Burning is still completely buggy and prone to problems. Apple had best wait until they are able to get it right... Add to the fact that there is not a single Mac or Mac display that is currently shipping that is HDCP compliant which means that Blu-Ray movies WILL NOT play on any current Mac. The list is long for reasons not to have incorporated Blu-Ray yet, Apple is right to have waited.

Gee, could it be that Blu-Ray demands MUCH more power for the laser than a standard optical drive? That doesn't make much sense for a laptop, which is Apple's bread and butter.

The lack of support in pro apps is telling, however. Apple may have its on solution in the works, but more likely, Apple is banking on wireless media rather than all computers having their own drives. The MacBook Air is the perfect example – Apple has set it up to use other PC's optical drives.

I doubt Apple is holding back Blu-Ray simply for download reasons. After all, Apple is promoting iTunes as a rental store more than a purchase, and people who have AppleTV will purchase from iTunes anyway. People who want to buy the physical media will still buy the physical media, and most of those people won't want to view it on their iPhone or Mac – they want to see Blu-Ray in full 1080p on their 60" flat screen.

Mar 14, 08 - 04:13 pm Comment from: DogGone

Hmm...maybe so but I think it is more the case that BR drives cost a lot. Apple could put them in the MacPro for the heavy hitters, but I think they are more focused on maintaining cost effectiveness in their consumer range.

Bluray is still expensive and the discs are high cost. Maybe in six months if the price goes down enough.

Well, they're going to have to include it relatively soon. With the demise of HD DVD, event videographers like me need media that we can put weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries on. Most people don't want there memories stored on a hard drive; they want a physical disc.

There's a lot of competition in the videography field and if using Apple products such as DVD Studio Pro won't allow for burning HD content then many of us will be forced to switch to Adobe software.

The technology changes so fast that by the time the prices come down on the Blu-Ray media alone, there might be another, cheaper, alternative.

Besides, DVD is still King with most folks. My external Plextor DVD-DL burner rips and burns much faster than the OEM drive in my Mac Pro. Seems less finicky about scratches and dirt, too.

Mar 14, 08 - 04:37 pm Comment from: pastrychef

Does OS X even have all the DRM required to play back Blue-ray discs yet?

Mar 14, 08 - 04:39 pm Comment from: MikeK

"Most people don't want there memories stored on a hard drive; they want a physical disc. "

And how many clients do you actually run into that already have a Blu-Ray player to play that disc on? My guess would be not many..

Besides, you can already store up to one hour of HD video footage on a standard DVD disc..

David Pogue is wrong on this one. Physical media is dieing. I stream all of my TV from the internet (with the notable and regrettable exception being live broadcasts.) Movies are not far behind. I give the DVD 2-3 more years before it is surpassed by streaming content.

MDN Word: Century, as in "DVD's and other physical media are sooo last century."

Mar 14, 08 - 04:49 pm Comment from: toby

Blu-ray is in it's early stage. It's wicked expensive, buggy and slow.


If I dropped 500 dollars for a Optical drive like that, I'd FREAK OUT!

Bring on the disc-less media! Enough with physical, scratchable discs!

I'm likely not the only one to notice that since the "death" of HD/DVD, the price of HD players has gone down, while that of BlueRay has gone UP. That's what happens when one has the market to oneself.

I'm seriously debating just picking up one of those last HD players for use as an up-converter to my plasma, which only does native 1024x768, but scales to accommodate 720P or 1080i. I suspect a BlueRay wouldn't buy me much.

Idiot.

I can think of at least 10 good reasons for not putting in BR but the best is just to keep from paying Sony.

Cringely hasn't got a clue. 99.9% of people see no differrence between 720p and 1080p unless the monitor is bigger than 50".

I believe disks are far from dead and are best kept alive and well. Streaming just doesn't cut it. Those of you living where you can do that, fine. But many people still live without access to high speed Internet even if they want it. Further, storing things remotely relies solely on other people reliably storing your data. Disks that you yourself can burn and store in a remote location provide an important backup for some people. Disks can also be viewed when computers or Internet connections are not available, especially including at many remote sites. It may have never happened to any of you, but Internet connections do go down. When something is critical and/or cannot be kept on a computer, disks are the logical alternative. If not disks, then some other physical media would have to be available. I am anxiously looking forward to Apple providing BR. I predict they will be an available option at or before the WWDC.

Mar 14, 08 - 05:28 pm Comment from: BiZarRo BaLlmEr

BR is over sold in the blog world. Not worth it unless you have a huge screen. Small market and expensive.
I'd rather request an 80G touch from Apple.

Oh. I DO think Apple should upgrade its aps as soon as possible to support BR. I see absolutely no reason to delay that.

I hope and expect power usage for BR to come down at some point, or introduce computers that will handle the increased demands.

BR is not simply about movies. It is also about increased data storage.

Why are so many people so keen to get a load of drm hardware crap which will cost extra money (the parasite media companies won't be paying for it) and waste your processor cycles? I hope they never put it in.

Mar 14, 08 - 05:34 pm Comment from: Demon

A BluRay disk at 1080p - Trip to store or Netflix - Both Suck
Apple iTunes download at 720p - Faster download and quicker buffer download time
Apple iTunes download at 1080p - A big file that has a longer buffer download time.

I'd go for 720p rentals and 1080p purchased HD download content.
But I still need a writable BluRay drive to backup my purchased content to.

Mar 14, 08 - 05:35 pm Comment from: John E

Cringely is off on a tangent once again. why do people read this guy? i guess he wrote something good once upon a time.

he managed to write a long piece without ever mentioning the magic term "DRM," which is the central issue for BluRay in Macs, not a tangent like wedding videos. AACS and HDCP. both require built-in user restraints in the OS, not just more stuff on a chip or a more complicated app like the current iTunes DRM mechanisms. Apple so far has refused to allow such invasive DRM in the OS, and me and many other users never want to see it on our computers. will not buy a computer that includes it.

instead Apple so far as 'quarantined' HDCP to the AppleTV only, which makes sense. adding a BluRay player to ATV would be a logical extension we may see this year.

Authoring BluRay video without the DRM should be possible on a Mac with the right software - data only BluRay burners are available now. but will they play back video on a BluRay player? i dunno. that would have been useful info for Cringely to explore.

funny thing is, he got one idea half-right last year. he suggested AppleTV's could be used as a peer-to-peer network to download hi-def files from iTunes to solve the bandwith limit issue for internet video. Well, Apple didn't do that, but Vudu did, and as a result has the best quality web video available today.

better luck next time, I.

Mar 14, 08 - 05:42 pm Comment from: Anonymous©

I like reading Cringely's musings, but this one is off-base. Apple is NOT holding up HD authoring tools in its pro apps so that they can sell more HD rentals for AppleTV. Talk about a total disconnect. Apple doesn't allow HD rentals for its computers.

Mar 14, 08 - 05:44 pm Comment from: MikeK

"When something is critical and/or cannot be kept on a computer, disks are the logical alternative. If not disks, then some other physical media would have to be available."

----------------------

Oh, you mean like an external HD? Yeah, a 1TB drive can now be had for $200, which is a heck of a lot less expensive than the same amount of storage on blu-Ray media..

blu ray external drives are available and are compatable with os x-for data reading/burning only.
I suspect playback of movies is far off due to the massive amount of drm support the movie industry wants kludging up the os and hardware.

Mar 14, 08 - 05:52 pm Comment from: Tommy Boy

@ zek: Different people have different needs.

I think all that most of us are looking for is just a Blue Ray option on the MacPro and BluRay support in Apple's Pro Media apps. Who wants to buy a friggin' Windows machine simply to author a Blu Ray disc?

Isn't this the same conspiracy theory floated as to why MS went with HD-DVD on the Xbox?

Apple's main customer base is the home consumer. Does that demographic need to burn 50GB of data at a time? If Apple were to include blu-ray as an option, how much would it cost the consumer? Note that it would have to be a burner, since a player is useless in a Mac especially going against Sony's PS3.

Mar 14, 08 - 06:09 pm Comment from: MikeK

@Tommy Boy " Who wants to buy a friggin' Windows machine simply to author a Blu Ray disc?"

-----------------

yeah, especially when it doesn't even work on a Windows machine.. Take a look in the Dell forums, they are having an absolute support nightmare with Blu-Ray authoring.. It's a complete disaster. And it's not just because it's Dell, it's because Blu-Ray authoring is too new and not fully developed.

Mar 14, 08 - 06:24 pm Comment from: Predrag

There are two levels of blu-ray authoring here: consumer and pro. The parallel from the DVD world would be iLife (with iMovie/iDVD combo), vs. Final Cut Studio (with DVD Studio Pro). Final Cut Express fits somewhere in the middle.

Now, all these applications can now capture and edit HD (some with intermediate conversion, some directly), but not one can author and burn blu-ray-formatted content. Adobe's Premier/Encore combo can actually do that. If you buy an external Blu-Ray burner, you can use Adobe's tools to author, Toast to burn and theoretically, you can produce fully-compliant blu-ray disc that will play in standard blu-ray player.

There is absolutely no reasonable excuse for Apple not to have DVD Studio Pro support authoring of blu-ray-formatted content. You don't need to burn this content onto the blu-ray disc anyway. The blu-ray specification allows players to read properly authored and burned content from standard (or dual-layer) DVDs. Obviously, if you're doing 1080p, you'll be able to squeeze no more than 45 minutes of video/audio on it, but it will be fully compliant.

Many professionals are using Final Cut Studio for their DVD production work flow. If they wanted to move to HD now, they'd have to migrate all that work flow to Adobe. That is a colossal hassle, but they just might be motivated to do it if Apple keeps dragging their feet. You only stay ahead in the game if you're competitive and on the cutting edge. In freelance video, that is HD today.

Mar 14, 08 - 07:06 pm Comment from: Hentercenter

I think Apple is making the right decision as of now for BR. Wait a bit to see if they actually are here to stay and then make your decision once you need to make the decision, do it.

Like a few others have said, thats a battery drainer for the laptops. no way they could support it with the current batteries they have now and still have a decent battery life.

Because physical media is dead. Digital distribution is the future. In three years, macs aren't going to come with any optical drive at all (same goes for other computers). And no one will miss physical media except old people (the same people who bitched about the floppy dieing). HD content will be distributed over the internet. A 1080p x264 bluray rip is 10 gb. The actual movie on the bluray disc itself is between 20 and 30 gb, but a bluray rip is a higher quality image due to deinterlacing. I have yet to see a blu-ray rip (and I've seen hundreds thanks to binaries) that looks bad. x264 is delicious. Go to any torrent site and search for "1080p" or "bluray" and you'll find plenty of these rips. The internet is already doing to HD content what it did to music.
On my 6236 kb/s cable connection (not even close to the fastest internet connection available in North America) it takes 4 to 8 hours to download a 10 gb file using bitorrent Faster internet connections are available in Europe and Asia too. There is no bandwidth bottleneck. Any suffering Hollywood feels is their own fault because they've treated the consumer as criminals.

My prediction: iTunes (or something like iTunes or bitorrent/ p2p) becomes the largest distributer of HD contentent by 2013 in North America and not bluray.

For the record...

as far as i know all c2duo macbook pros are HDCP ready... its just that no software exist on mac to view hdcp content...

hook up a blue ray hd dvd drive and boot in Windoze with the correct software and you get your HD discs movies out via the DVI out

Also another reason why apple is avoiding putting bluray into macs is that it eats battery life waaay faster than dvds.

Oh and another reason is all the craptaciular DRM that is needed to play a bluray movie. Why buy a bluray disc when you can watch your bluray download on on your 60" tv.

Hard drives and SSDs are far more superior than physical discs. Physical discs can go bad (I lost a lot of data on dvds that got corrupted with age) and you have to erase and burn a disk every time you want to add new data. A 1 tb hard drive is cheaper than any bluray option and more reliable too. Even with the extra scratch protection a bluray disc will die more easily than a hard drive not used regulary whose primary purpose is storing/archiving/backing up data.

Shiny spinning discs are a thing of the past. Get this through your heads old people.

I would rather see bigger hard drives or more SSDS in macs.

Mar 14, 08 - 07:59 pm Comment from: Predrag

I wonder if Mr. Name here has ever stepped outside his high-tech ivory tower. This planet has over six billion people. At least half of those are consumers of media. Of that number, large percentage today has DVD players (even in North Korea, mind you). Now, how many of these people have internet access today? In developing countries, penetration is about 10% (4% in Africa, 13% in Asia, 17% Middle East, 43% Europe). As for broadband, in the developing world, it is practically non-existent. In the developed world (Europe, North America, Pacific rim), it is reaching 50% of the connected population (average; South Korea is at 80%, US is much further down).

Who in their right mind would ever switch their business model from a medium that will likely reach majority of population that can afford it to a medium that can, at best, reach 10% of the same population?

Optical media will live for at least twenty years. Much like DVD won't die before it turns 20 (at least 5 years from now), neither will Blu-Ray go away for long.

Consider yourself lucky with your 6,236kbps broadband. You represent the minuscule elite that has access to it. The rest of us can get 1.5Mbps at best, and vast majority of those other broadband users (represented in the stats above) get 512kbps when they're lucky.

One more issue is the backbone throughput. YouTube alone consumed as much bandwidth in 2007 as did the ENTIRE internet in 2000 (i.e. not that long ago!). And we all know how crappy YouTube video is, compared to your fat HD 20GB download.

To believe that the world will be downloading their HD media in as little as 5-10 years is simply delusional.

Oh yeah. I'm going to be downloading 50Gb of data over my 1.5Mbps comcast cable. Yeah. Right.

The US internet infrastructure will have to improve dramatically before it becomes practical to go without optical drives of any sort. We're going to need an average download bandwidth of at least 25Mbps. And that just doesn't exist in US cities.

All those co-axial cables and DSL phone lines will have to be replaced with fiber optic cables before we'll get the bandwidth to effectively download 1080p content. The chip heads out there might be patient enough to wait all a full day for a 50 gig movie to trickle in, but most people won't.

In the mean time, Blu-ray will have a long and prosperous life cycle.

BitTorrent
On what network?
With Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T;(Your Life Delivered to the NSA) all scheming to cap bandwidth, kill net neutrality and 'shape traffic' you think Apple is going to get a free ride to push 1080P to your Mac?

Mr Cringley (all 3 of you bloggers- BTW) a few points are in order:

1- On anything less than say a 40"+ HDTV at standard viewing distance most people cannot tell a noticeable difference between 720P and 1080i. Most consumers don't sit 12 inches in front of their sets and the 32"-40" TV is the market sweet spot.

2- In the backwards USA, unregulated cartels have most of us (consumers) locked into a bandwidth that is far from adequate for pushing 1080P content. Most consumer DSL, the most common (and lame) version of broadband, is about 9x the speed of an old Dial-Up Modem. Show the ISP's how to push massive volumes of 1080P video over a cheap copper wire (AT&T;'s future standard) and you can be rich. Very rich.

3- The backbone of the US portion of the Net is creaking under current loads. What you are talking about would dwarf the already massive load of spam largely made possible by lax Microsoft security and the Outlook program that is bogging down networks.

4- The recession we are in (not entering) is going to piss in the punchbowl of nerd dreams of a 1080P universe anytime soon. In true American fashion, 720P/1080i will be 'good enough' and will be the standard for a season.

P.S.- The Pharmacy called and said your meds are ready.

It's to the point now where the prospect of reading Cringely makes me cringe. The guy is a digital Dvorakesque dope desperate for something to write about. I find him totally ignorable. Is he a plant by the neo-con-jobs, who have been madly scrambling to destroy the much-too-truthful PBS and NPR, in order to defame public broadcasting? Hopefully he will be shown the door when the neo-con-jobs are kicked down the street and out of town.

My personal guess about what goes on with Blu-Ray along with some facts:

1st: Mac users have been able to hook up and burn to Blu-Ray drives since the things came out. This is because Roxio have been brilliantly on top of the market and provided burn ability in Toast 8. So much for the stupid myth that Mac users can't do Blu-Ray. Toast 8 has been available since 2006.

Oh, and there's the MegaPEG product line for Mac that provides Blu-Ray encoding. They've been available for over a YEAR. This includes MegaPEG Pro HD QT that lets any QuickTime aware application encode to Blu-Ray. Yeah, that includes Final Cut.

2nd: The Blu-ray hardware is still (A) Too frickin' expensive for the mass market (B) not yet designed to fit into MacBooks.

3rd: Blank Blu-Ray discs are OUTRAGEOUSLY priced so far.

*Think about it: These days just about every new computer comes with a DVD-DL burner. And how well are dual layer discs selling? NOT. They are still far too expensive. It remains cheaper to use single layer DVDs. We know perfectly well that when the price of DL DVDs drops to meet the price the market is willing to pay, they'll sell.

4th: No computer company with a brain bought into either HD-DVD or Blu-ray. Why? No one likes a loser, especially a company's accountant. Ask the bozos who did buy into HD-DVD. Poor clown is crying. Boohoo. Now that the stupid format war is over is the time when companies buy into the winner.

5th: <<Nose in the air>> I pronounced HD-DVD -D-E-A-D- during the first week of January. But my smartiness had no idea it would happen as soon as February! So here we are a few WEEKS after the demise of HD-DVD and this jerk Cringely thinks Apple is supposed to immediately come up with an Apple Store Blu-Ray option for customers? Give me a break. Apple doesn't rush in so they can sell quick junk. They do things correctly instead, the way Apple customers have always demanded it.

Conclusion: If you've got the need and the money you can do Blu-Ray on Mac RIGHT NOW! Meanwhile, if you're on a budget, as most of the world is at the moment thanks to the arrival of the Bush Depression, you wait until you can afford Blu-Ray.

As for 1080P: I love it. It puts 1080i and anything lower to shame. But will it become the Internet video format standard? That's easy. The answer is a BIG FAT NO! We are already into the days of the Bandwidth Bottleneck. Go read about what the evil high bandwidth ISPs (Comcast, Time Warner...) are doing to gouge customers for eating major gigabytes in downloads. It will make you ill. No way is 1080p going to pass muster with these companies, and maybe it shouldn't anyway. I see nothing at all wrong with having to go buy a physical Blu-ray disc to be able to have 1080p in your hands. Anyone doing 1080p over the Internet will be called "Bandwidth HOGS" and will be taken to the slaughterhouse. It would be most excellent if we had enough bandwidth to avoid this problem. But get real. For now, bandwidth is a huge problem.

:-Derek

I've said it before, the answer for Apple is VERY SIMPLE.

Sell the customer a combination 720p download and 1080p Blu-Ray disk. They get immediate satisfaction with the download, and high quality with the BD for subsequent viewings.

The best of both worlds. It will work with the current Internet bandwidth. They get archival storage with the 50 GB BD and don't fill their disk drive with HD videos. (Or spend a fortune on TB disks.)

Mar 14, 08 - 10:41 pm Comment from: Think

Gotta love kids these days. They are so immature.

If I owned a company and I had a choice of selling a movie to 90% or 40% of the population, what the hell do you think I would do?

Stupid kids. Get off your mom's computer and clean your room.

Second reason 1080p downloads won't happen. BANDWIDTH
Others said it earlier. If your so smart, do a little research and educate yourself.

Predrag has nailed the arguments for increased support of BR. I'm happy I don't have to address the foolishness of Name's position that all should be & will be via high speed Internet. Absolute idiocy and if Apple goes that way they are ignoring enormous parts of the world, as Predrag correctly points out. That includes many parts of the US, by the way.

Why do people insist on telling Apple not to even have BR as an OPTION. MacPros can certainly handle the power requirements. And bringing BR support to Apple aps is only anathema to those who have no serious needs and for whom iMovie will always be enough.

There seems to be a real lack of vision in these postings. Fortunately, Apple still seems to have it.

Mar 15, 08 - 12:18 am Comment from: John E

thanks D. Currie for some facts! Cringely never bothers with those when it/they can just B.S. instead and still get hits.

but ... check out Vudu. they may have solved the bandwith problem with their proprietary P2P Vudu-net.

Mar 15, 08 - 02:46 am Comment from: flappo

as has been mentioned . 720p is more than good enough for the vast majority of consumers - especially below 55" screen size

i can see itunes 720p hd downloads killing off any hd video format , especially as they're all eyeing another pointless leap with the 1440p crap etc

there's a video stream of steve jobs that's really impressive to my eyes , i watched it the other day and it just blew me away

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/iphoneroadmap/

the second hd option..

try it out and let me know what you think

Mar 15, 08 - 12:07 pm Comment from: Macintosh

ya know, if you had asked consumers they they wanted in year 2000 for the next big thing in music, they would have said MP3 CDs, or MP3 DVDs that could hold thousands of songs.

That's not what they wanted. They wanted an iPod, but they were not capable of putting those pieces together in thier heads and make that prediction. Same goes for movies. People think they want Blu-Ray discs, but what they will end up getting is an iPod for their TV, as in Apple TV.

Getting all fired up over Blu-Ray is just going to postpone the inevitable... Download everything to drives. And those drives will be SSD.

Extra hard drives are not good substitutes for disks. They are not easily portable or storable and fail more often than disks.

Mar 15, 08 - 12:26 pm Comment from: ken1w

Are slim slot-loading Blu-Ray read/write drives even available? Except for the Mac Pro, all the other Mac's need the slim drive.

OK. SSD drives will be better.

Mar 15, 08 - 12:57 pm Comment from: Hm...

I am to be wondering if the studios that Apple is wooing for iTunes downloads are agitating against Apple incorporating BlueRay drives that can burn movies? Thankfully, a read-only drive won't sell anymore.

At Predrag:

Where is your innovation? Are you seriously going to recommend that professionals who want to author blu-ray all need to switch their workflow from Final Cut to Adobe Premiere? They are not going to do this and they haven't historically cause most FCP users use After Effects and not Shake. Professionals currently use a Apple/Adobe workflow to author blu-ray.

And you don't need to buy a PC to do this. I use boot camp with Encore and an external Blu-ray burner. And no Adobe Premiere.

As already said: Apple macintosh will only push B-R if it can furnish all the tools with it.
1) New Displays (or deciding to stop them completely)
2) Totally customized and adapted burners for Mac
3) Absolutely optimized and flabergasting apps

Blu-ray disks don't scratch, I've tried to scratch one I rented from blockbuster. Internet downloads are so popular for one reason.. they are free. I don't think people will stream their movies if it costs the same as renting a physical version especially since the blu-ray has better picture, sound and special features.

Mar 15, 08 - 06:44 pm Comment from: ElderNorm

Well, we knew that the FUD mongers would have to unveil something to make Apple look bad, and I guess that this is it.

Its pretty lame but I guess Cringely had to come up with something for his article and this was it.

Will these guys never give up? :-(

en