Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support - Page 5

Your generous: I'd say within 5 years optical's dead. Why carry a disc when a thumb drive will do? 64GB are going to get cheaper over the next few years. I just can't get excited over Blu-Ray and have no intention of purchasing the beast. It's yesterday's technology on steriods is all.

I'm not sure if I fully agree with this chart. I have a 37" 720p Plasma (i was an early adopter) and run blu-ray on it, and we sit about 12' away from it. I do notice the difference between 480p and 720p very clearly on this set. Now that might have something to do with the Blu-ray player.

well then Matsushita, Sandisk and Toshiba better get a move on SD memory and start making deals with the movie labels. Frankly, if they don't do this in the next 5 years, then the idea will die quicker than all you nay-sayers interject about BD. At least BD players will play DVDs and Audo CDs. You're talking a whole new player and people will have to replace all their movies again.

There must be a better way. I think Home Servers are the best way to solve the problem, but you'll never keep people from wanting physical copies.

The only way the electronics industry would switch to SDD media storage is if the consumer market forces them to. If consumers bought fewer optical discs and carrying media files on SDD became more common. This could happen at some point, but its not likely anytime soon.

I do agree the electronics industry should be pro-active and jump on these things before the consumer market discovers the convenience and they are unable to gain control of it.

You don't need a player at all. They just need to built a media slot into televisions or use the media card reader in a computer.


You can already create a home server now. The way that DVD sales are slumping there are signs that many people don't need to own movies.

Transferring digital formats shouldn't be an issue (another piece of hardware to sell 'em). Many people copy their CDs to iPods. I don't like messing with CDs anymore...not when I have it all easily accessible on my iPod. If the older DVDs aren't HiDef, then they're going to have to repurchase anyway, irregardless of the medium....or, just keep the old players. There's a density race going on that the larger equipment loses in.

Apple would get these drives at a third the price. Possibly lower.

When they put the Pioneer DVD recorder into the Digital Audio Powermac, they didn't raise the price from the previous model by more than a couple of hundred bucks. At the time that drive was selling for $1,000 by itself.

If they want to do it, they can.

True... My 5-7 years was for downloading to become mainstream (not dominate, just a common practice for the average consumer), not for the demise of blu-ray. And even then, I think rentals will be the most common form of download. There are just too many issues around ownership of downloaded content, transferability being the main problem.

I think there's market pressure to add it. Apple is holding off as long as they can. It's also taking off pretty well, considering the recession we're in.

Unfortunately, I do.


I'd actually like to believe it, but I'm finding it difficult.

A couple of years after the personal computer first came out I was telling people that in the future we would be buying music on memory cards instead of LPs.

But that was also before the CD came out. That changed everything.

Just like bubble memory was supposed to kill the HDD, it never happened.

I think the timing is impossible.

I don't see the industry moving to a format that will have just a handful of years of life.


If the price was $20 to $25 it might work. But except for a very small number, I just don't see those prices as being desirable. as I said, players will be $50 in a couple of years.

We'll be getting B_R recorders in out computers for $30, just like we have DVD recorders now. Recordable disks will be cheap, and no one will go back.

We'll see 9.5mm recorders for laptops, and they will be everywhere.

I can't see anything else happening.

Optical has too much life left.

I read an article where they were saying that the format can even hold a 4k movie on a double layer disk with no changes.

IBM has already produced experimental recorders and disks that have 200GB. This is also the same format.

It's just beginning.


But she doesn't fall under that term "active users" you said the survey found. She doesn't count basically.

On the other hand, I have several friends who are still on dial-up. One even has sold over 750 items on e-bay, and has bought about the same number.

But again, most "broadband" in use is 1 Mb/s or less, totally unusable for this purpose.

When 50% of the public has 20Mb/s then we can talk about this.

By the way, Carlton is a friend of mine, and he would argue with you about your interpretation if you think that you're getting the full resolution in the sense of seeing it...
The chart, which I use for my quick numbers is easy to understand.

Sitting 6 feet from a 42" screen WILL give some of the benefit of 1080p, but you need to get to 5 feet before you can get all the benefit. Is that what you're saying? If it is, then fine, but be careful how you describe what you see.

For consumers with big HD Tvs, t is, and more people are moving to them every day.

That's more than I expected. It just makes the argument stronger.

Ain't it the truth?

The chart is correct. You simply can't see the detail of 720p from 12 feet with that size set unless you have eagle eyes.

What you are seeing is the beginnings of the higher rez. but just barely. If you move up to 6 feet, you will see a much sharper picture.

Agreed. I NEVER buy on iTunes, but I VERY frequently download. I love the service and as a student with no tv and no desire to go to the movie store let alone deal with returns and such it is fantastic.

It can be argued this is the situation BR is in. I believe Blu-ray sales will stall long before it becomes a primary medium for video.



That's the progression for every new media format.


Go back to what? Hard Drives are the primary storage medium now, not DVD's. I don't know of anyone who plans to replace a hard drive with any optical format.


Largely because of legacy and because the major content industries don't offer other viable options for physical media. Optical media will have a long slow death, but it won't have anymore significant growth.


There is no reason to use extremely compressed 4K at home. We should get to less compressed 1080 first.


You said you didn't understand what they meant by active users. She was an example people who are not active users.

Its not too difficult to go from 1% to 2% or even 5% to 10%. If BR went from 25% to 50% then we could be talking.

Apple has a relatively small piece of the action and as such being able to standardize components across assorted product offerings allows economies of scale to keep costs down. It's no coincidence that today superdrives are standard fare in Minis, Pros, the Macbook, the iMac and the Macbook Pro.

Not only does using laptop components allow clever form factors for the Mini and the iMac, it also means there is an entire range of desktop CPUs, etc. that Apple simply doesn't have to concern itself with.

I believe that Apple wants the transition from a Superdrive that embraces DVD to one that extends to Blu-Ray to be as short as possible. So, yes, Apple has not rushed to embrace Blu-Ray. But the poor economy is a factor. At a time when Apple has been focused on lowering the price of its computers because of a soft economy, along comes Blu-Ray, which if adopted in the early going would bave involved Apple offering a Blu-Ray option so costly that the complaints would have been overwhelming.

Now that licensing is more favourable and the cost of hardware is starting to enter a workable range, Apple has a better channce of being able to offer Blu-Ray at a price point that will facilitate a significant adoption. Also the installed base of Blu-Ray players is growing, further improving the chances of enough customers opting for Blu-Ray to make it all work.

Seems to me that Apple's approach to Blu-Ray is consistent with how it does business. While other companies were tackling the flash music player market as an opportunity to out-feature the competition from a hardware perspective, Apple was thinking in terms of how to have their solution make sense in the daily lives of customers. Also Apple approached the handheld computer space by methodically evolving what started off as a simple music player into what we have today with the Touch, the iPhone, etc. Others might offer Blu-Ray simply because they can but Apple wouldn't offer it unless it could provide a satisfying implementation.

An article I just remembered about.

In last year’s fourth quarter, usually a big one for DVD sales, Mr. Smith explained, the studios’ revenue from sell-through of conventional DVDs and Blu-Ray discs fell 23.4 percent, to $2.6 billion from $3.4 billion.

Bad News for Hollywood’s Bottom Line: DVD Rentals Doing Better Than DVD Sales

We'll have a couple of years before we'll see this through.


But if the price is too high to begin with, it may never get started.


Once people get used to watching B-R and using it for a recording format they will never go back to DVD.


B-R will have significant growth.

we'll just have to disagree on this one. It's too early to see how it'll shake out.


I'm talking about the future. It will come


I understand that, which is why I said she doesn't count.

It isn't the inactive users that matter. It's the active ones. but there is just a fuzzy idea of what that means.

It is someone who is on 30 minutes several days a week, or is it someone who is on 10 hours every day. Or where in between? Does it have to do with what they do while online, or is being online enough?

Do they have to be online buyers, or can they just be passive browsers?

It all means different things. People who are "active" may not be people who buy online, while those who spend little time there may do so for the purposes of buying.

That's why we have to wait a couple of years to see where things stand.

I'm a student too. And the best thing is that I download nearly 20 songs daily from iTunes.

I think BR Must rock when you view an action blockbuster film . So how many people are gonna fill there dvd collections with dinner with andre or pretty women .
and how many top quality LOTR type flicks come out every year ?? What kind of movie will sustain a yearly growth for BR ?

The number one reason to drop prices and raise quality is to kill off all pirates . We all win if that happens .


Remember all you luddites the largest music store in the world is all digital itunes. Which is %100 disc>free. WE are already half way disc free with ipod>itunes setup.

I FEEL that Amazon and APPLE with take over the movie buisness.

BR will re-invent itself in another form . IN 5 yrs A
BR-NANO PLAYER will be on-sale

9

Which version? The one for iPod, AppeTV, iPhone, or desktop?

Yes we do.



The consumer certainly has to feel what they are getting is worth the cost they are paying.




Oh, I see.



I don't see it. My peers are New York professionals in their mid-thirties. A prime demographic for adoption of electronics. Few of us are particularly excited about Blu-ray. Most of us spend more time typing on our phones than looking at television.



I think they were talking about a broad definition. I don't think they intended to be specific.

You make a great point. Blu-ray does work well for "The Dark Knight" or any film with an epic scale. There is little need for 1080P or seven point surround sound for a romantic comedy.

SMack! An ad in the middle of a thread. This is going to wasteland.

That's true although I also like to sit close to my 42" plasma. I could sit at the other end of the room but I like sitting close as I like the big screen cinema feel.

Exactly. However this is based purely on resolution and ignores quality of the source, native resolution of device versus up/down-scaled etc,

The two weakest arguments against blu ray are

(1) price of "software". Shop around and most new releases can be found for bargain prices (Amazon is a great place to start)
(2) DVD looks the "great". I keep hearing people argue that DVD looks great on there 50+ inch plasma screens and frankly they must be blind. I see blocking effects, unintended motion blur, soft images, banding, difficulty with rendering smoke and dust storms without macro blocking, etc. and that's watching on my 42".

The one argument for blu ray that doesn't interest me at this point in the curve, is storage. Hard disks are much better for this.

I didn't buy the new Macbook Pro 13 because I am not buying another laptop until it has Blu Ray support. If I am abroad I like to buy movies and watch them on my laptop. I have stopped buying DVDs.

you never know what might happen do you?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8192840.stm

can we convert old movies into bluray or even tv series like dark angel

YET the movie playback on my MBP 15" rivals any on the planet
except maybe bluray
i said maybe .

I just watched the international and was blown away

good luck

WHY are you posting spam ??

The option of going entirely disc free on the movie front has been there for a long, long time. Renting straight off your TV via cable, subscribing to a premium movie service, etc. has been an option for quite some time. Yet, despite this and despite the fact that owning movies via optical media DVD and now either DVD or Blu-Ray is by far the most expensive way to get your movie fix, millions of people still buy their movies in optical-disc form.

This being the case, why is it that so many are in a hurry to declare optical media dead?

Optical media has its advantages and will not be replaced by digital downloads. Rather, I believe they will co-exist, much as we have seen many forms of media evolve over the years. Cinema has lived on, as has radio, as has television, and so on and so on. Maybe some adjustments are needed, sure, but as the human population continues to grow not to mention the base of consumers dramatically expanding in many foreign markets like China and India economies of scale still work in a splintered environment. It's not one size fits all any more.

You're talking about a generation of folks who came to believe that NTSC television was just fine thank you. We have grown accustomed to accepting far less than good quality in our TV images.

When it's claimed that DVD is good enough, I can see why in that compared to what we have been used to, upconverted DVD is quite good. Don't forget that the average consumer for a few years now has been under the mistaken impression that HD TV means that if you have a big screen especially if its flat anything you watch on that screen is HD.

We have been conditioned, more or less, to watch TV with something less than a critical eye, if only because if we didn't older technology would have driven us crazy. I look at upconverted DVD and my initial reaction is that it's not bad. But if I start watching HD-DVD, upon switching back for a few minutes it strikes me that lesser sources are just plain awful. Then my training honed over decades of TV viewing kicks in and I'm fine with what I'm seeing all over again.

This sort of decades-old conditioning is going to take a while to reverse.

I am so over optical media. Early in our marriage, my wife bought me a 200 disk CD changer for my birthday. This was around the time of the first iPod. It didn't take long before all my music was in portable, digital form. To this day, all of my CD's are still in that disk changer in a closet somewhere. Today, I would rather torrent a movie that I own rather than find the disk and put it into the drive. I don't remember the last time I brought media with me on the road.

I also produce a little music as a hobby. My last CD was literally my last CD. There is no reason to burn them anymore. Digital distribution is the only thing that makes sense to a small producer like me. Giving pieces of plastic to family and friends is silly when you can just point them to a web page. It is much cheaper and more profitable to sell music digitally than on plastic disks.

Now with the rise of large, inexpensive hard drives, movies are next. The only thing keeping BR alive is the lack of bandwidth and none downloadable special features. It is not just that BR is dead; optical is dead. How long will it be before we no longer go to stores to buy applications on disks?

What the hell is wrong with you?

ummm 6 feet is perfect for a 40".

It could be argued that anything better than what they got before is "great". And there are a LOT of variables that can affect how well a DVD upscales. Some of the artifacts you are seeing are likely the result of a crappy scaler in your TV or DVD player. I've watched DVDs on my 42" plasma that do, in fact, look great. But they look like crap on my brother's lower-end HDTV. And if your widescreen DVD was encoded as anamorphic it will look vastly better on an HDTV than a DVD which was encoded with letterboxing.

I'm not saying it's blu-ray quality, but the overall picture quality is better than a lot of the cable company's 1080i. And the real question isn't if it's great. It's if it's good enough. A lot of audiophiles complained that iTunes 128kbps AAC music was crappy, but it was good enough for most people. There are very few of my DVDs that I would ever feel the need to upgrade to the blu-ray versions because they do look very good upscaled. And I'm not so anal when watching movies that I'm going to care that much about the difference blu-ray would bring.