Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support - Page 4

I agree the last 3 itunes rentals I found on netflix same week . The DL thing is great for instant watchu\\ing at work.but from now on i iwll wait a few extras days for netflix.

I will buy the LoTR next mega mega release extended comes out .

WAS THE WATCHMAN THAT GOOD ???I will get it then .
Does only best buy have the bonus extra's ??

update B R WON THE WAR !!!!

I only buy discs when its action block buster type . But DIGITAL and disc sounds great .
Good will hunting or dinner with Andre is a joke on blu ray . Thats , my point about Bluray .

RIGHT now i get movies from discs bought from stores
bootlegs
Itunes
netflix
roku
reg dvr tv
HULU
and all the abc cbs type sites
AND Amazon just sent me 50 Amazon dollars to spend in their movie dept. connected to roku or online

I would love one stop shopping

Thanks guys

9

Most people seem to be focusing on Blu-Ray for the video support, but I think a very important point for including Blu-Ray is the raw storage size.

Apple was an early adopter of DVD players across the entire Mac line compared to PC makers, which meant Apple developers could very early switch to DVD exclusive distributions and not have to offer a second multiple CD version of everything. That reduces cost and complexity.

We are now reaching the point were the storage space of DVDs for applications is at it's limit. Quite a few games, for example, are already needing 2 dual layer DVDs. Adobe Creative Suite and even Apple's Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio are also needing multiple discs. The Internet may be improving, but with all the talk of ISPs wanting throttling and bandwidth caps, having to download 20GB+ of data isn't going to be the most convenient. In Canada, for example, even a 60GB bandwidth cap is generous making downloading a Blu-Ray sized 50GB a virtual death sentence for the month, pardon the pun. John Carmack's RAGE has terabytes of raw textures that he's going to try to shrink to 2 DL DVDs for XBox 360 and PC/Mac, since it wouldn't be convenient to be swapping more. He's said he's open to making a better 50GB+ version for computer users if there was interest.

The faster Apple adopts cross-board Blu-Ray drive support, the faster Mac developers can switch to Blu-Ray distribution instead of multiple DVD distribution. Digital downloads may be the future, but physical media still looks to be the mainstream for the next 5-10 years. And with price being the consumer/media focus these days, the addition of Blu-Ray drives will most likely be done without increase end-user model price with Apple absorbing the cost in their already large profit margin. It's hard to see the reason to complain about getting Blu-Ray support if you won't have to pay extra for it.

That is actually is what I said was the major advantage of BR.


Apple does care and has expressed resistance to adopting BR DRM. But it sounds like the BR group is working to resolve those issues.



You don't see any advantage to using SD cards? They are smaller and faster than optical discs. You don't need to buy a stand alone player the use them.

Yes I know 32GB SD cards are not price competitive today. That is why I said its only a matter of time. The prices will come down. I remember when a 2GB USB flash drive was $40. Now they are given away as key chain promotional items. At the same time their is little business incentive for electronics manufacturers to use flash storage. They prefer to keep us locked into the current player/physical media business.

In all you are saying the prices of Blu-ray are quickly dropping while the prices of solid state storage will take years to drop. Isn't that going out of your way to stack the deck.


Broadband use among active internet users is at 94.7%, broadband penetration over all in the US is at 63%. So at least 63% of households should have a 10Mb/s connection.

That's the straw man that most BR advocates throw into the argument. Most people don't want/need Blu-ray quality video. Their is little need or demand to stream/download Blu-ray quality video.

So b r won over hd ?

I agree, I have not said that physical media will die anytime soon. At the same time it will never again see the growth it had ten years ago.


Again you are only looking at this from the stand point of owning media. A large percentage of the market are perfectly happy to rent, watch cable, or video on demand.

I think it's highly unlikely that every broadband user will automatically have a 10Mb/s connection. Especially when a 128kb/s connection is already advertised as broadband since it's faster than dial-up.

Still it has to compete with a growing list of options where you don't have to buy a stand alone player at all.

OK yes I was wrong about that one. But I've never seen anyone whose had broadband and was not able to stream video. 10 Mb/s are not required. If Mel is talking about downloading and watching Blu-ray quality in real time then, yes it will take a lot more than what we have now. But that's not really an issue, as few people expect Blu-ray quality.

I didn't get that. It seemed as though you were saying that the difference wasn't that great when compared to the earlier advances.


I think Apple has been using it as an excuse. None of the player manufacturers seem to have a problem. None of the other computer manufacturers who provide B-R with their their towers or portables seem to be having a problem with it.

I just think that Apple has been holding off as long as possible because they think it doesn't coincide with their business interests, which are downloads, though I think they're wrong.

I know that Apple is trying to sell the aTv, and according to one analyst, they've sold about 6.6 million, which to me, would bring it out of the hobby section of the store.

But at what cost to computer sales? Apple would have to sell 11 aTv's to one computer in order to equal their average MSRP. I doubt that will ever happen.

And if they make no more profit on a percentage basis selling or renting movies or Tv shows than they're expected to be making on music sales, that's not worth it either.


It isn't whether there's an advantage, it's the cost. Remember that whatever the cost of the physical media and packaging is, that cost is tripled to the consumer. That's the way it is, or the manufacturer actually loses money, because of the costs of distribution and retail. If it only costs $1 for the DVD and stuff, and it costs $4 for the stick and stuff, that's $3 to the consumer vs $12 to the consumer.

No, I'm not stacking the deck. Pressing Cd's, DVDs, and B-R is a well known technology, and it's just a matter of having the plants in place. The actual costs of the media, e.g. the polycarbonate disks, are exactly the same.

With flash, or whatever they would use for the stick, it's the price of the media itself that has to come down. That takes new generations of process technology.

For example, Intel is now manufacturing their flash for their SSD's on 34 nm. That's brought the cost down for high speed flash memory, but its still pretty expensive memory. Regular stick Flash is much cheaper of course, but still is far more expensive than a pressed disk.

Don't forget that we can buy high grade recordable CD's or DVD's for $0.15 apiece, and on some sales, for much less. The cost of an actual disk for pressing, without the cost of the pressing itself being done, is less than a penny.

We can't go by the price of recordable B-R disks because they have nothing in common with the pressed disks. The disks themselves also cost less than a penny.


I have no idea what "active" means. Is this some standard I don't know about?

Most people have internet service that no greater than 1Mb/s. In some areas, it's even 256Kb/s. That's called broadband, but it's useless for this purpose.

It's just a small fraction of internet users that have more than 1Mb/s.

EVEN netflix see's with their instant watch program the future . AND its free.

million upon millions of discs coming and going >>>>>>
compared to trillions of 1's/0's cruising the lighted fiber optic way with zero carbon foot print and much lower prices and no more pirates.

Flash stick movies with the best digital standard will pass dvd by so fast . So i wonder how all your BR-hd discs will look with all your laser discs collection ??

lol >> teckstud could say this in 2 lines

Great article on the topic:
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6664863.html

As of the articles writing (6/11/09) Apple has not signed on for managed copy yet and titles won't be released until 1st quarter 2010.

I did 7 ,months of chemo radition last year . So HD lives on with itunes and amazon DL ??? NO br DL ???

BOY i feel stupid now .
fcuk

9


IS this on what format ??

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php...itunes+is+fast

Dude.. what are you talking about. You cannot buy Brand new released movies on VHS. Even if there are a FEW titles available, the majority of stuff is DVD only meaning that if you want to be able to watch the latest movies.. you can't on VHS. Thus VHS is Obsolete.

MELL i can use this post 6 months from now and argue the other way .

The disc is a way to control their profits
when flash sticks become cheap or re-usable
bring your used 100g flash card dongle and pick up 3 top quality movies for 6.99 each
the studios can make a killing because the whole brick and mortar dvd infrastrucure will die
the studios will make a killing because the pirates are dead with such a low price/high quality

AS i stated before i have watched star trek on a flash card given to me /and it opened my eyes to the tiny SD card universe coming . IMAC MBP ROKU on and on can play instead of a dvd player TODAY IT CAN this

6 yrs from now cutting out all the stores plastic gas oil trucks factories players on and on that it takes to keep the disc world alive will be fast fading away , Our carbon foot print will get smaller

mayne i will vist you mel in 7 yrs and we can laff about how wrong we all was .

Oh yes I have said that. From the average sitting position in the living room the average person cannot see a huge difference from BR and DVD.

Ten years ago the average person could see a difference between VHS and DVD.


I think Apple has been using it as an excuse. None of the player manufacturers seem to have a problem. None of the other computer manufacturers who provide B-R with their their towers or portables seem to be having a problem with it.



Well obviously they don't see that BR sells more computers.



We are essentially comparing the price of write once optical discs to rewritable SSD. Write once SSD would be a lot cheaper than RW.

Look at it this way. Back when DVD was new, they were typically around $25 - $20 depending on the movie. You could buy the VHS version for $10 - $5. I'm sure at the time it was a lot cheaper to make VHS tapes than press DVD's. Until DVD production really ramped up.

I'm sure they can create a write once SSD format, it doesn't need to be the fastest high quality variant. They could sell movies for $40 - $30 with the advantage that the movie can play in anything without the need for a third media player.




From the article I got the numbers from. Active users were people who use the internet on a regular basis.

Yeah I wasn't paying close enough attention and got MB and Mb confused.

by the time flash becomes that cheap, optical will become even cheaper. believe it or not i first read about what is now called blu-ray being successful tested in a lab back in 1998 or 1999. don't have links, but i've already read about optical storage mediums that make BD seem like a floppy disk. and almost every single TV sold today can already do better resolution than the max BD resolution

Nothing at this point can have a zero carbon foot print. The electricity used to run all of these systems mostly comes from burning coal. The goal at this point is to lower the carbon foot print as much as possible within current practical means.

Teno is talking about buying the movie on a stick, not bringing your own in.

I don't think that bringing your own in would work. You could do that now with a DVD or even a CD disk, but you can't. I know that a stick would be better, because the kiosk wouldn't need an optical recorder with the possible breakdowns, but I just don't see this working.

Pirates will always be around as something has to be paid for. Even if a movie cost one dollar, they would still pirate it.

I think a flash stick is stuck between two worlds. The world of optical, which will be around for a while yet, and the world of download which will be dribbling in over the next ten years.

I just don't see a place for it. It seems to be a product without a market in this regard.

I just wanted to chime in and say "itunes is slow". Because it is!

There are several ways to measure speed, but the most important one to humans are the responsiveness of the user interface. A well-designed user interface continues to function while the application performs background tasks. Itunes consistently ignores input when communicating with my iPod, AppleTV or when switching views. If they don't want to patch this beast together before they switch to Cocoa, then they'd better get switchin' because it is very annoying.

This is a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro from last year. Makes me miss WinAmp. So, fingers crossed Steve will yell "surprise! I wasn't sick, I've just been rewriting iTunes instead of sleeping" and BRING IT ON.

Cocoa is not a program. It's a fundamental OS technology that Apple has set as it's core application development engine for Mac OS X. It is a modern coding architecture. Cocoa is 32bit and 64bit compliant.

Why is everyone crying out for Cocoa? Because Cocoa is object oriented, meaning it's a cleaner, less buggy, better optimized, and 64bit capable app technology. The other option is the legacy Carbon APIs which Apple has publically stated for 10 years are on a path for obscelescence. This starts now with Snow Leopard where everything is going 64bit and carbon is being left behind.

iTunes is slow for many reasons, not just due to it's basis on carbon. Still, Cocoa would at the very least make iTunes run faster, be 64bit compliant, and would give iTunes access into the rich technologies in Snow Leopard such as Grand Central.

The simple idea is this: iTunes uses legacy technologies that apple's Mac OS X departments
aren't advancing and making better. At the current time, iTunesis unweildy and unoptimized.

And just to answer your question, Mail, iCal, iChat, and dozens of other apps are already based on Cocoa in Leopard. Mac OS X users use cocoa 24/7 on their mac. Just because they don't know what it is, doesn't mean they don't use it.

I agree I don't think flash for media will work as a major distribution format, at least not the way things are currently set up.

I think if electronics manufacturers were being smart about the future this is they way they would go to keep physical media going, perhaps some years down the road they will. At the current moment they are most concerned with keeping us locked into buying players and discs. They are going to ride that business model until it collapses. Usually they are slow to change and the collapse is very hard for them.

I don't agree streaming will only dribble. The options and choices for watching streamed video has greater potential than Blu-ray. What will really put streaming/downloading over the top will be mobile devices. Apple has pretty much set the iPhone up for media streaming. Media streaming services are working on adapting for the mobile space. Its taking other phone manufacturers more time to get themselves to a point where media streaming services can take advantage of their platforms. Soon it will all come together.

Yes. That's exactly what I've been saying. We've had this discussion on a number of other threads here over the past couple of years.


That's possible at this point in time. But it didn't sell many computers when they put the first DVD recorder into the $3,5000 Powermac I bought either. It takes a couple of years.

That's why they should offer it as an upgrade. Even if they couldn't offer it on a MacBook, they could on the Mac Pro, the iMac, and even the Mini.

That wouldn't cost them much, and would let them know what the demand is, and if it's rising over time, or falling.

At worst, make the OS compatible, and let third party companies continue to offer the players and recorders. That would cost them little.


When I mentioned Intel's SSD, it was just to show that prices for flash come down with a generational shift in process technology, as capacity goes up. I did mention that it was more expensive flash than stick flash. And you're talking about stick flash. Prices there are subject to the same advances as flash for SSD's.

But, re-writable disks still cost little. No more than a few cents more than the write once versions.

I was mostly making the comparisons between a pressed disk cost vs the cost for the flash stick. And that flash, would have to be non- rewritable. It would really have to be a ROM, but you were talking about flash.


It's always cheaper to press disks than to record to tape. I remember it. DVD costs were cheaper after the first year.


They already have ROMS. You would put the movie on a ROM. This is easy to do.

No one would buy a movie for $30 to $40. You were the one who just used $20 to $30 pricing on B-R movies (rare these days) as a reason why almost no one would buy them.

I see some people caring, but not too many. As most things do have an optical player, that's not much of an incentive.

In a year, we'll see B-R players for under $100, maybe $75. Why buy a movie for $30-40, when the B-R will cost $15. That will quickly cost more than a B-R player.

And before holiday season 2011, B-R players will be selling for $50, less on sale.


Honestly, I still don't now what that means.


Happens

Hmmm, doesn't seem to be slow on my 8 core Nehalem Mac Pro. I wonder why?

We agree on some things. But I'm really concerned as the point of this discussion, with HD downloads. That's what we're talking about.

Right now, Apple's 720 downloads look just a bit better than a DVD of the same movie. A bit sharper, but sometimes not as good in shadow detail, or highlights, or color saturation, where they seem noisy in comparison.

A 1080p download at the same quality level as their 720 offerings will not come close to the B-R disk. When I compare the 720 download to the B-R, all I can say is Ugh!! And the price is the same or higher!

What bandwidth will Apple need to offer an uncompressed (over the format's built-in compression) download of the movie, and how many people will have the bandwidth on their end?

That's the real question. All the rest pales in comparison.

So, let's get some real numbers.

Assuming a download bandwidth of 10Mb/s, that gives us an ideal rate of 1.25 MB/s.

If we have a 1080p movie at the same quality level as a B-R, let's assume 25GB. Some longer movies are using dual layer B-R disks already.

That comes out to a download time of 333 minutes, or almost 5.6 hours.

How many people are willing to wait 5.6 hours for the movie to download? Because 10Mb/s isn't enough bandwidth to stream the movie obviously.

To do that requires at least 25Mb/s.

How long do you think it will be before the majority of people have connections of even the paltry 10Mb/s? How many will have 25Mb/s in a decent amount of time from now?

And that's ideal. What if someone else in the house wants to use the connection at the same time?

2006 is when major industry stopped producing VHS. So you are correct but many companies still support it (see my post about Panasonic's combo BD/VHS) and required it (see my post about reality shows requiring VHS tape for applicant auditions). It may be obsolete but not completely gone. That's all i was saying. 30 years and not gone yet. And, my point was that everyone on this post seems to think that BD is dead and should just go away. So if VHS is still around after 30 years, BD will probably be around for another 20 if not longer.

I was refering to Watchmen BD and LotR on DVD.

I agree, but it's hardly going to be the size you can put in a sub 1-inch thick laptop is it?

People have posted a number of products here earlier.

Yes, cos adding nearly $1000 dollars to the pre-markup price of any MacBook is going to be a really compelling idea.

/sarcasm

In Apple's defence, the success of CDs and DVDs was inevitable whereas Blu-Ray faces a much more fractured, certainly more complicated marketplace.

It seems to me that Apple has by no means indicated it will not support Blu-Ray ever. The timing wasn't right until maybe now and so Apple waited. Nothing wrong with that.

Its true but you know Apple.


Ok, I'll take your word for it.


I agree few people would buy a $30-$40 movie. What differentiates this idea is that you don't need a stand alone player. You can simply stick the card into a TV or computer and have glorious 1080P and surround sound.

Early adopters would be into this at that price point. As the price comes down, it would filter to the masses. But electronics manufacturers won't do this because it risks destroying their current business model.


I think people would have no problem moving on from optical players if given a choice.

I barely use the optical player in my Mac anymore. Most of the software on my computer has been downloaded from the developers website. The last third party application I recall installing from a disc was MS Office and that was about four years ago.

Most of the media I watch is from cable, video on demand, Hulu, iTunes, or Netflix streaming. A growing number of my friends are watching movies through torrents. But I don't participate in that myself.

Several of my gaming friends are more into playing Xbox or Playstation online. You really don't even need the optical disc for that, even though you still have to buy it to play the game online.


The electronics industry would charge a premium for this to make up for the loss in media player sales.

$30-$40 would not be that way forever, the price would come down as the price for BR has come down.


Its like my Grandmother. She lives in a retirement home and the building is wired for broadband. She has computer hooked up to broadband, but she rarely ever uses it.

I agree. In this context BR is clearly is the winner. But quality is not the only variable. For many consumers not particularly important one.

About 62% of US BD releases have been been on BD50

Are you saying that badly written UI(/any) code runs better on faster hardware? That is OUTRAGEOUS!

Sorry you get the full resolution regardless of the distance, although the typical person wont perceive the full benefit of a 40" 1080P until 5 feet. However blu ray discs contain much more detail (compared to heavily compressed iTunes media). Disks are typically 50GB and main features are typically about 28GB.

Frankly I sit around 6 feet away from my 42" plasma and Blu Ray 1080P content is noticably better than all other sources I use. The best example of this can be found in comparing DVDs to Blu Ray versions of the same film.


On my 24" PC screen the difference may not be obvious however I want to buy a film once and play it back at home and when travelling so blu ray on a Macbook Pro would rock.

In short for home cinema lovers Blu Ray is a must.

All I want in iTunes 9 is the ability for it to recheck a remote folder for changes to files and consistently lock on to the folder in Time Capsule. Songbird does this, but I prefer iTunes. I want to be able to keep my music library on my Timecapsule, which already works (just not consistently), and not have to update the location (the same location) randomly when I'm using iTunes.

It's my biggest gripe. Sometimes it just works and I'm impressed, others it does not. I know I'm not the average mac user with this setup, but I don't have the room I need on my laptop.

That was his point. What can be perceived regardless of the actual resolution on the screen.


6 feet is really close for a 40" television. That means the TV is larger than is needed for your room.

Well yes and no
yes
Everything thing alive has some carbon foot print.
AND NO


By going 100 percent digital do you suppose that all those
Dvd AND dvd player factories being closed saves carbon and other terrible stuff. ?
Shipping dvd players and dvd's to warehouse's and then reshipping again to local; stores or to amazon and then shipped a third or even fourth time to the person who bought the dvd /dvd player

And driving to those stores add a forth or fifth carbon action

plastic/cardboard wrapping again ADDS to all that and shipping to assembly plants and the producing of materials itself
Cradle to grave demands that I mention that all these trillions of discs are never going back to nature like say THE MBP glass screen . And all that plastic and other landfill stuff , in the digital world there are no words for any of these items because the carbon foot print of mega mega server farms is very low per single billable MB item

In fact the carbon saved by going all digital woulld be so large that if you had mega server farms that only did itunes/amazon DL's you would be carbon plus forever .

You can slightly reduce the dvd world carbon foot print a bit by grabbing low hanging fruit like solar or wind to some production area's . Shipping by boat or car or plane is already at its best carbon level . So you can only reduce by 10 to 40 percent considering how scattered the whole dvd industry is .

Server farms already save so much carbon at the start compared to the mega large dvd industry
\\ Yet they can go all the down to 8 percent by adding wind/wave/solar /thermal/geo /and better SW to manage the whole thing , LOW amp chips made in the billions will also reduce the cooling costs of all digital world server farms .

AND best of all
an all digital world means direct to consumer from artist transactions
And all the pirates can not beat $7.99 DL or $4.99 Dl movies/
So its win-win for lower media prices

i need some daylight

MEL STOP GETTING stuck on minor details

It is a controllable way to stop pirates
tenobell also has great idea;s about all this .
MY sons already use little squares discs for there DS games so please think ahead my friend
in ten years with fingerprint control we can wipe out the pirates and get cheap movies and studios will make more money
everyone is happy



win win win future

time for some COD4