Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support - Page 6

If its a professionally produced DVD/Blu-ray the quality of the source should be top notch.


Yes the price of BR materials is going down, but then so is the price of DVD materials.

Its not so much that DVD looks great, its that DVD is good enough to keep most people from feeling the need to go buy a new BR player or invest in a BR collection.


What's the point of watching BR on a 1440x900 screen?

Technically yes. Those shows were all shot on film. Film's resolution is far beyond 1920x1080.

The problem is aspect ratio. Those shows were not shot for 16x9, that aspect ration was not protected. So many of those old shows will either have to be 4x3 native or stretched.

6' is not a typical viewing distance. If you have a group of people they can't all sit 6' away.

Maybe he ultimately wanted the blu-ray for home viewing, but also wanted to watch it on his laptop? I don't consider buying a blu-ray version for home viewing and a dvd version of the same movie for mobile viewing to be a reasonable option.

Your conversion will only be as good as the copy you are making it from.

I myself don't carry around discs when I travel. I rip movies and music into Quicktime files.

You're operating under the antiquated notion that everybody will do things the same way, using the same technology. Maybe that was true in the 1940s but it's not the case now.

Companies like Apple need to provide the equipment that leaves the choice of how to handle media up to the consumer. That means that if optical media is part of the landscape, Apple's computers need to be able to handle optical media. The only computer Apple sells that doesn't come with an optical drive is the Air and even that one offers such a drive as an add-on. There is no evidence that everybody has abandoned optical media. A few, like yourself, have but that proves nothing. I haven't bought a DVD in more than a year but the last time I checked, they still sell them. Somebody must be buying them.

If Apple is going to be offering optical drives in their computers for the forseeable future, why not Blu-Ray?

I don't think so. TV-shows produced during the 90's usually have terrible sources.


Downscaling 1920*1080 looks far better than upscaling 720*480, especially with a viewing distance of less than a metre. I thought that'd be obvious.

Anyway, another great benefit of Blu-ray is that we don't have to deal with the PAL speedup nonsense any more, or the terrible NTSC->PAL transfers.

I also rip my movies to my laptop (pysical media takes up way too much space), but even so if you are buying blu-rays for home viewing you will still need a computer with a blu-ray drive to rip the movie. Macs not being blu-ray friendly can create a lot of problems.

Depends on what are you calling the source. The original negative the show was shot on or the tape format used to broadcast the show.



You're not going to see a huge difference on a 13" screen. Resolution isn't the most important factor in the sharpness of an image, it is one link in the chain. Contrast detail plays a bigger part in perceived sharpness.

I am a little confused here.

There are some posts that talk about how cheap BR has become. However, when you look further the cheaper prices and often the availability refers to players only. Do I take it that many here would be happy with a BR player/DVD/CD player/recorder combination.

Although there are BR recorders available, there are very few and many are just notifications that they are coming.

http://www.blu-ray.com/ the BR web site doesn't seem to emulate some of the high degree of availability posted here. Prices are still high.

BR releases are limited as listed in the new releases. Most are older/old movies and very few of them at that.

Although the BR consortium has agreed to license Chinese manufacturing of BR RECORDERS, nobody has officially been approved to do so. Thus the price will remain relatively high.

There are external drives for Blu-ray that can work with the Mac. But then I don't use BR, so its not a problem for me.

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Until ripping a DVD or Blueray disc is as simple and legal as ripping an audio cd I don't think most people will rip their movies. Right now its a 2-step process that takes a long time and it can be argued that its not legal.

Still not very elegant. If you were on the road and bought a blu-ray and wanted to watch it before you got home, you would have to a) hope that you brought your external blu-ray drive and b) rip/re-encode it. It would be much nicer if macs supported blu-ray playback and had at least a build to order blu-ray drive option. I've been hoping Snow Leopard would be bringing those things for quite some time now, looks like it could happen.

I actually don't need blu-ray disks either, but I have a bad habit of buying stuff in anticipation of doing something else. I've been planning on moving and buying a new tv for quite some time, and I've already built the htpc/gaming rig (with a blu-ray drive) that I want to sit under it, but right now it is only hooked up to a 22" monitor \

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Yep - until we have plenty of reliable, redundant, expandable, and CHEAP shared networked storage, we'll still have optical discs. Hard drives are cheap, but devices like drobo and others are not.

It's not legal at all. But as long as you only use the file for private use no one will ever know.

Some studios began including digital copies of films with the DVD. I'm not sure how well that effort is going. I don't really buy DVD's anymore. I think they should really push the advantage because torrenting movies is only growing.

The comment was about 1440x900 pixels, ie, a 15" screen. And I do notice a clear difference on my 15" MBP between a DVD and a HD trailer.

I agree with your concerns about legality but ripping is a one-step process (via MacTheRipper).

For a moment i thought you was my wife screaming at me.
damn dude i almost died from fright.

It should be legal though. We should have been able to import DVD's like CD's long ago. The lengths they go to in preventing paying customers from doing what they want with the media they purchased annoys me to no end. I really have my doubts about how much piracy they actually prevent with their legal battles and copyright protection. It is probably less than than the money they spend developing these scemes as it does nothing to stop downloads. Except for HDCP of course, since they charge a licensing fee to cripple HD media. DVD's and Blu-ray should be free of DRM and you should be legally allowed to copy them to your computer, no strings attached. The rental versions could keep their copyright protection if they are really worried about the rent and rip phenomenon.

Sorry for the somewhat unrelated rant, but that is a real sore point for me.

Back on topic. I have seen both free and "discounted" digital copies available. Both have DRM that limits the number of computers/programs you can use them on. The discounted ones really annoy me because they are still charging you for something you have already purchased, and could have freely made your own digital copy if they didn't work to prevent it. That said, digital copies are better than nothing, and they do take a lot less time to transfer than jumping through hoops to re-encode your media.

They had also said that they were leaving too much money on the table by not joining in.

When a former rival who seems insistent in the beginning to refuse to support the now standard technology, decides to do so, it's not just because of a whim, but because large amounts of money are to be made.

If B-R wasn't going anywhere, it's not likely Toshiba would bother.

Now THAT's getting interesting. I'm perfectly happy to buy my content and use it in a legally licensed way, but I want them to get the ergonomics to match my actual usage.

I'd like to see if Apple could use Managed Copy functionality to remove the optical drive from the Macbook entirely. It takes up to much dead space inside. I'd load up at home, then watch on the go.

That's not the offical BR site, that is like saying AI is the offical Apple site.

http://www.blu-raydisc.com

Unless you are talking about stand-alone recorders, there are plenty for computers. The cheapest are about $250. While that may seem high in comparison to where DVD recorders have dropped to, that is still half the price of a year ago, which was half the price of the year before. By this time next year, they could be $100.

You can't always use current pricing to judge where an industry is going, because prices are always high in the beginning couple of years or so, but drop considerably afterwards. DVD remained high for years, as did recordable disk prices. But look at where they are now.

I remember when Yamaha said they were discontinuing making CD recorders because they couldn't make money from them. I'm willing to bet no one is making any money from making DVD recorders either.

You can't maintain an industry if the main players can't make money from the products.

Great fair post . I agree with you. Water will always find it s true level . ANS BR will always in some form be around ,I only wanted to sound a laser disc alarm thats all .

Buying 30 top rated top action blockbuster type film's <not ported over> I could do that . I might wait for a bundle price reduction from an oversea's dist . But if BR is that good why not . The LoTR must be wonderful on BR .

I wonder if we could get HALO or COD4 With BR action.

America is abused badly by the movie dist . Asian versions of our best block busters or x-file type tv series are always carefully encoded at the highest possible level over there. MY 9 Season X-FILE box for $200 < korean market version > plays back in excellent quality.Since i watched all nine seasons straight thru in order I got used to fine depth and many grays in the shadows in dark Seattle.

I may be wrong here since I only have seen a few asian copies of our blockbusters. I will find the link to share with you guys , it's a cheap Low budget site with great box sets with no frill at all .LEGAL
Just great quality discs . I wonder if they have BR OVER THERE CHEAP
end of long boring post sorry

Heres another reference to Toshiba's move to B-R.

Notice the last paragraph:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...age_2009-08-10

Don't forget that Toshiba's one of the world's largest companies. If they didn't think there was a lot of money in this, they wouldn't bother to embarrass themselves like this after stating strongly, last year, that they wouldn't do it.

Good Point.

Something must be wrong, I am agreeing with you on something...

Thank you. I made the correction.

Most people have one or two issues they disagree on, and the rest are up for grabs.

I can't except your reasoning.

MicroSoft is well known for embarrassing themselves for basically the same type of retraction.

Except that in this case, Toshiba will be making money from their decision to backtrack on their word.

When MS has done it, they haven't done too well.

But what other choice do they have? Perhaps joining Apple might be one. But hardly one that many would want to admit.

I don't believe that BR will not prevail. I just don't believe it will come as we know it today or that it will be resolved soon.

The consortium is not settled in how they are going to implement it and more importantly, there are too many 'new' technologies that make the 'disk' a slam dunk strategy.

Sure, storing movies are ideal for the BR format. Many here profess its superiority. But once everybody realizes that its more restrictive anti-pirating measures may change a lot of minds.*

Using Blu-ray for backing up files seem ideal for video production. But for the average consumer who can't find their CDs without much consternation, it will be agony moving to the much more massive medium. One of the things we notice with a lot of folks backing up, they will hesitate because they don't want to waste the CD unless they can 'fill' it. Now that DVD's are more prevalent, backing up is even more problematic. Blu-ray? By the time they get around to backing up routinely, the medium will be replaced.

Watching Blu-ray vs DVD movies is something to behold. However, most here are demanding it for a machine that really is for sole use only. I can't imagine many sharing their BR with the family from one's own personal computer.

And in this day, our current economy will only set back the one factor that made CD/DVD's so popular, i.e., everybody could well afford it.

A last thought. Blu-ray movies may be on the rise. However, the next time you visit a Best Buy, ask them how well blank BR disks are selling.

*http://palgn.com.au/playstation-3/28...racy-measures/

Whatever they used for the DVD transfer.


I'm seeing a pretty huge difference. Not everything depends on the resolution of course. Some of the things that help improve the picture are the lack of visible macro-block artifacts, lack of banding and a lack of general noise artifacts around sharp edges, such as opening credits.

???


I don't understand this. It's already prevailed. What do you mean by "resolved" or "is not settled"? It's resolved and settled.

That last minor problems about internet access and the rest have been laid to rest.


Yes, t's very good.

Almost no one who actually buys anything actually cares about anti-pirating measures. That's a myth perpetuated by those who do care.

DVD's also have strong anti-pirating measures. They did very well. Most people want to buy or rent a movie and watch it. It's a small minority who want to make copies. And pirates will always be pirates. They're motivated by the desire to steal and get a way with it. Unless everything is free, they will continue to pirate.


The same thing was said about Cd and DVD. I'm not impressed with the argument.


If you would substitute the word "most" with the phrase "a few", you would be correct.

This has nothing to do with sharing your machine with the family.


It's pretty amazing how well it's doing in this recession. It would be doing even better if we weren't in the middle of one. It's still a new format, but still...

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3127


I'm not impressed with that either. It took several years before CD or DVD writing took off.

Now guys.. remember really hard. "microsoft" should be in the lower case (non-capital. they don't deserve that )

Embarrassed??? Who exactly could possibly be embarrassed.?

I am sure they had all bases covered from the start .
Every one involved in the end just wanted a single standard , getting there was the hard part

The original camera negative is the source. It has far more resolution and color information than will ever be used by a home video medium.


What movies are you seeing those problems. Professionally produced DVD's rarely to never have banding and artifacts. Studios are not paying all of that money for poor quality.

Now you're brining more people into the equation? LOL Five passengers is not a typical capacity. If you have a larger group of people you can't all sit in the car. Stellar logic.

6 feet for a 40" is ideal.

True but how much is going to cost you to upgrade from this to play your Blu-Ray with DTS HD and Dolby TrueHD? \


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