Apple unveils new iMacs with 21.5 and 27-inch displays - Page 13

Originally Posted by MacTripper

Sure it does, if it's tied to hardware/firmware.

Say someone stole the keys to your unique hardware and copied them, Sony find out that ten zillion copies of the phony keys are being used to pirate content from BluRay disks. They send out a brick command in their firmware update that disables the keys and your machine in the process.

This is what people are suspecting what happened with the PS3, because the hardware is the same and the firmware should be the same, so what is bricking some machines and not others?

Originally Posted by MacTripper

Imagine this happening to Macs?

Perhaps this problem happened at the right time for Apple.

Originally Posted by MacTripper

And like they are not all working together on the same standards?

Sony bought BMG.

Originally Posted by MacTripper

I'm with Steve Jobs that BluRay is a bag of hurt. I agree with him.

Out with this mechanical and get high capacity SD cards instead. Easier to change the DRM without bricking the drive too.

Originally Posted by NonVendorFan

I have the same player (now in the bedroom). It doesn't play CD's. Impulse buy actually. I went into BestBuy to get an HDMI cable and saw that it was finally out. That cable cost me $1,110. I had to get another cable for the Sony BDP-S1.

As far as the request to move the Blu Ray vs Downloading to another room.

Please don't. This has been amusing. Only a bunch of Mac Idiots can take a blockbuster week for Apple and turn it into 13 pages of bitching. I love it. Looking forwar to the next 13 pages.

Originally Posted by ChristophB

So flakey and unreliable that my Sony BDP-S1 that I bought in Oct 2006 will play ALL of my 550+ Blu-rays.

Originally Posted by Ten

Screens are 1080P & 27" is better then 1080P.

Watch the video.

http://www.apple.com/imac/the-new-imac/#large

Originally Posted by NonVendorFan

I have the same player (now in the bedroom). It doesn't play CD's. Impulse buy actually. I went into BestBuy to get an HDMI cable and saw that it was finally out. That cable cost me $1,110. I had to get another cable for the Sony BDP-S1.

As far as the request to move the Blu Ray vs Downloading to another room.

Please don't. This has been amusing. Only a bunch of Mac Idiots can take a blockbuster week for Apple and turn it into 13 pages of bitching. I love it. Looking forwar to the next 13 pages.

Originally Posted by Rob55

Blu-ray is already supported by Final Cut Studio. Both Final Cut 7 and Compressor 3.5 can burn directly to a Blu-ray disc. Unfortunately, thanks to SJ and the chip on his shoulder, we have to use a 3rd=party drive. So, in a matter of speaking, it is on the Mac platform.

SD cards a fine an all, but they're not quite ready to replace optical media. I do see it happening at some point, but if I didn't have an SD card slot in my PS3, they'd be useless as a tool to deliver content to my A/V system. Unfortunately, my AppleTV doesn't adequately fill this role either. There are too many formats it just can't (or won't) handle.

I have Netflix as well and their streaming content is nothing to rave about.

Originally Posted by rangerdavid

Wait, let me get this straight - you have purchased $11,000 in Blu-Ray disks? (550 x $20 each)?

I'm sorry. I don't think I can consider a single comment you make seriously. Wow.

Originally Posted by rangerdavid

Wait, let me get this straight - you have purchased $11,000 in Blu-Ray disks? (550 x $20 each)?

I'm sorry. I don't think I can consider a single comment you make seriously. Wow.

Originally Posted by MacTel

I worked for a company in Seattle called ModSystems that is heavily invested into by Toshiba (a.k.a. the ones that lost the HD war with Sony). Their goal is to out-do Blu-ray with kiosks that will dispense SD cards for SD enabled TVs and/or players (including computers). That was a stated goal of theirs in late 2007, so I don't know where they are with that today but I'd agree that SD can store more than a blu-ray disc and is more portable. However it isn't as ubiquitous. Does Apple know something we don't since they are privy to industry news?

Originally Posted by Woochifer

That's because the industry is very protective and selective about the information that they release. The last comprehensive report I've seen that had a full disclosure breakdown of revenues by format came out more than two years ago, and it was something that Sony paid for.

The revenues from Blockbuster and Netflix are counted as rentals. Sales revenues only account for sell-through by end users.



It matters if you want a true apples-to-apples comparison. Just comparing Blu-ray to digital distribution is hardly that. If you want an apples-to-apples comparison, then you need to either compare all optical media vs digital distribution, or compare only Blu-ray vs HD digital distribution.



Like I said, optical formats are not exciting to tech writers. They're pining away for the digital/networked living room, and yet another optical disc format is not part of that world order. Article after article that I've read from PC World, CNET, Engadget, and other sites throw out one negative article after another about how Blu-ray's dying or Blu-ray's not going to make it past the next year or Blu-ray's no better than DVD, etc. Much of it presents little to no evidence, other than the writer's all-too-apparent biases towards streaming/downloading. And considering that these guys are tech writers, the articles also frequently display a surprising lack of knowledge about digital video in general (i.e., the errant claims of unconverted DVD being the same resolution as Blu-ray, not knowing that ANY 1080p HDTV will upconvert a 480p DVD signal to 1080p, etc.). They might know their way around computers, but their appreciation for consumer electronics is often lacking.



But, look at what happened (or hasn't happened) on the audio side. Despite every publication out there having already written the CD format's obituary and despite the iTunes Music Store having been online for more than six years already (the amount of time it took for the DVD to overtake VHS), the CD format still has a 65% market share. Downloading has been hyped to no end by the tech press and mainstream press alike, yet the supposedly dead CD format is still very much alive.



This is the same tunnel visioned view of the world that the tech press has -- that market trends and consumer behavior patterns do not matter because we're talking about digital tech. Indeed, digital technology is a big part of our everyday lives, but its adoption and integration into an average household is an evolutionary process that takes years. Whether a consumer electronics format is digital or analog, it doesn't matter. Consumers do not make lifestyle changes or fundamentally shift their spending habits overnight. They do not adopt new technologies just because the tech press is enamored with it and makes wild predictions about it (most of them are wrong anyway -- witness the hype that accompanied the dotcom boom/bust a decade ago).

Consider that 40% of U.S. households do not currently have broadband. That part of the market is already excluded from this digital future.

The fact of the matter is that Blu-ray's growth trajectory is not that far behind the DVD at a comparable juncture. This is not bad considering that HDTV penetration remains just under 50%. Remember that Blu-ray also had its own competition with HD-DVD, and that format war split the market for about a year and a half. Blu-ray has had full support from the studios for less than two years.

When you look at the growth of downloads and other online media, you need to consider what the actual competition is. I don't see Blu-ray and online media as inherently competing for the same market. Downloads and online media are primarily replacements and/or enhancements to PPV, movie rentals, and recorded TV programming. Who does this affect directly? It affects Blockbuster, the satellite and cable companies, Netflix (though they do their own streaming), and it reduces time spent with DVR recordings. Sell-through disc media is affected to some degree, but it's not a direct competitor like those other options.



And if you choose to compare disc media with digital distribution, it's not even close right now. The type of market shift needed for digital distribution to overtake disc media takes years, and I don't see anything in the market trends that would indicate this happening soon. We're talking about shifting of billions of dollars, and anyone who does consumer expenditure research will tell you that it does not happen overnight. Just because digital technology enables a market change to happen quickly, does not mean that consumers will behave accordingly. Overestimation of how much technological change consumers will tolerate in a short-time is what doomed most of the dotcoms, and anyone who bets on downloads and streaming taking over TV and movie viewing in short order will probably face a similarly rude awakening.

Originally Posted by Woochifer

That's because the industry is very protective and selective about the information that they release. The last comprehensive report I've seen that had a full disclosure breakdown of revenues by format came out more than two years ago, and it was something that Sony paid for.

The revenues from Blockbuster and Netflix are counted as rentals. Sales revenues only account for sell-through by end users.



It matters if you want a true apples-to-apples comparison. Just comparing Blu-ray to digital distribution is hardly that. If you want an apples-to-apples comparison, then you need to either compare all optical media vs digital distribution, or compare only Blu-ray vs HD digital distribution.



Like I said, optical formats are not exciting to tech writers. They're pining away for the digital/networked living room, and yet another optical disc format is not part of that world order. Article after article that I've read from PC World, CNET, Engadget, and other sites throw out one negative article after another about how Blu-ray's dying or Blu-ray's not going to make it past the next year or Blu-ray's no better than DVD, etc. Much of it presents little to no evidence, other than the writer's all-too-apparent biases towards streaming/downloading. And considering that these guys are tech writers, the articles also frequently display a surprising lack of knowledge about digital video in general (i.e., the errant claims of unconverted DVD being the same resolution as Blu-ray, not knowing that ANY 1080p HDTV will upconvert a 480p DVD signal to 1080p, etc.). They might know their way around computers, but their appreciation for consumer electronics is often lacking.



But, look at what happened (or hasn't happened) on the audio side. Despite every publication out there having already written the CD format's obituary and despite the iTunes Music Store having been online for more than six years already (the amount of time it took for the DVD to overtake VHS), the CD format still has a 65% market share. Downloading has been hyped to no end by the tech press and mainstream press alike, yet the supposedly dead CD format is still very much alive.



This is the same tunnel visioned view of the world that the tech press has -- that market trends and consumer behavior patterns do not matter because we're talking about digital tech. Indeed, digital technology is a big part of our everyday lives, but its adoption and integration into an average household is an evolutionary process that takes years. Whether a consumer electronics format is digital or analog, it doesn't matter. Consumers do not make lifestyle changes or fundamentally shift their spending habits overnight. They do not adopt new technologies just because the tech press is enamored with it and makes wild predictions about it (most of them are wrong anyway -- witness the hype that accompanied the dotcom boom/bust a decade ago).

Consider that 40% of U.S. households do not currently have broadband. That part of the market is already excluded from this digital future.

The fact of the matter is that Blu-ray's growth trajectory is not that far behind the DVD at a comparable juncture. This is not bad considering that HDTV penetration remains just under 50%. Remember that Blu-ray also had its own competition with HD-DVD, and that format war split the market for about a year and a half. Blu-ray has had full support from the studios for less than two years.

When you look at the growth of downloads and other online media, you need to consider what the actual competition is. I don't see Blu-ray and online media as inherently competing for the same market. Downloads and online media are primarily replacements and/or enhancements to PPV, movie rentals, and recorded TV programming. Who does this affect directly? It affects Blockbuster, the satellite and cable companies, Netflix (though they do their own streaming), and it reduces time spent with DVR recordings. Sell-through disc media is affected to some degree, but it's not a direct competitor like those other options.



And if you choose to compare disc media with digital distribution, it's not even close right now. The type of market shift needed for digital distribution to overtake disc media takes years, and I don't see anything in the market trends that would indicate this happening soon. We're talking about shifting of billions of dollars, and anyone who does consumer expenditure research will tell you that it does not happen overnight. Just because digital technology enables a market change to happen quickly, does not mean that consumers will behave accordingly. Overestimation of how much technological change consumers will tolerate in a short-time is what doomed most of the dotcoms, and anyone who bets on downloads and streaming taking over TV and movie viewing in short order will probably face a similarly rude awakening.

Originally Posted by applebook

You're idiotic enough to buy an HDMI cable at BestBuy and have the temerity to label others as "Mac Idiots" (sic).

Originally Posted by MacTel

I worked for a company in Seattle called ModSystems that is heavily invested into by Toshiba (a.k.a. the ones that lost the HD war with Sony). Their goal is to out-do Blu-ray with kiosks that will dispense SD cards for SD enabled TVs and/or players (including computers). That was a stated goal of theirs in late 2007, so I don't know where they are with that today but I'd agree that SD can store more than a blu-ray disc and is more portable. However it isn't as ubiquitous. Does Apple know something we don't since they are privy to industry news?

Originally Posted by NonVendorFan

You have no idea where I live and what purchasing options I have available to me so please keep your arrogant ignorant hole shut.

Would you prefer I pay $30 shipping for a cable overnight? When you need a cable you need a cable. Hell I even got a great Blu Ray player out of the trip to BestBuy.

Now please continue with the Mac know it all complaining when Apple had their best week ever. It's been great.

Originally Posted by applebook

Why? There are lots of movie buffs out there. Plenty of audiophiles spend far more than $11,000 on albums too.

Originally Posted by ChristophB

Don't get me started on LP and SACD $$.

Originally Posted by Rob55

I think that discussion would be more at home over at AVSForum.com

Originally Posted by ChristophB

If I didn't know your name from blu-ray.com I'd ask if you like to stir the pot much. . .

Originally Posted by NonVendorFan

You have no idea where I live and what purchasing options I have available to me so please keep your arrogant ignorant hole shut.

Would you prefer I pay $30 shipping for a cable overnight? When you need a cable you need a cable. Hell I even got a great Blu Ray player out of the trip to BestBuy.

Now please continue with the Mac know it all complaining when Apple had their best week ever. It's been great.

Originally Posted by ChristophB

Don't get me started on LP and SACD $$.

Originally Posted by ChristophB

If I didn't know your name from blu-ray.com I'd ask if you like to stir the pot much. . .

Originally Posted by applebook

I guess Best Buy opened a shop in the Isle of Patmos. Otherwise, there is no city on the planet with a BB that doesn't also have literally dozens or even hundreds of vendors that have offered cheap cables for many years.

But I suppose we can't criticize him since we don't know him. He DOES know all of us, though, well enough to denigrate us all as "Mac Idiots."

Anyone who buys Best Buy's cables must be smoking something

Originally Posted by ChristophB

OMW! Peace!

Originally Posted by nicwalmsley

Here is what I am planning to buy. I would love to get some recommendations on any shortcomings to this configuration. Eg, is 2x4GB of RAM distinctly better than 4x2GB of RAM (that is, worth the extra dollars)?

Configure your iMac 27-inch:
- 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
- 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x2GB
- 2TB Serial ATA Drive
- ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
- 8x double-layer SuperDrive
- Apple Magic Mouse
- Apple Wireless Keyboard and User's Guide
- Apple Remote
- AppleCare Protection Plan for iMac
- Auto-enrol

Anything there I should change? Graphics OK? I've been told that the 27 inch needs better graphics? How true is that?

In Australia this is coming out at AUD$ 3,822.02 - it's a business expense so that is well within budget.

ps, please shut up about BR and Glossy. It's been done to death already!

Originally Posted by melgross

You're SURE? Not that you think that maybe it will be the case?

You know, other manufacturers AIOs have either been MORE expensive than Apple's, or have been regarded in the reviewing press as being crappy.

The built-in monitors have the potential of being some of the best around, but that awaits testing and calibration.

Originally Posted by applebook

B-R will be fine once the prices of movies drop, more classics get transferred to the format (STILL no Finding Nemo or The Incredibles!!!!). Eventually, DVD will be phased out like VHS, but we are still years away from this happening.

Originally Posted by ChristophB

We all have our quirks, biases and hypocrisies. It takes The Internet to flesh them out.

Originally Posted by applebook


Anyone who buys Best Buy's cables must be smoking something

Originally Posted by applebook

I think that you should save $200 (USD equiv) and stay with 4Gb RAM. You can upgrade it later yourself for far less once DDR3 prices drop.

Also, for 2D and basic GUI 3D, the 4850 is more than sufficient. You will not be able to run the latest Windoze games at 1440p resolution though. For that, you would need SLI/Crossfire or at least a GTX280 (desktop version). The 27" iMac was not designed as a pure gaming machine, so I suspect that for your intentions with it, you will be fine with the 4850.

Originally Posted by applebook

You forgot to include the fact that SD is substantially more expensive than BR-D, and most SD cards are nowhere near the read/write speeds either.

Keep spewing nonsense though. We are all amused by your idiocy.

Originally Posted by NonVendorFan

Do you even know when the first bluray player came out? HDMI cables were not cheap and they didn't have a lot of choices, hell I had just got my first receiver about 2 months before that that had HDMI.

Don't preach to me about prices for a cable when I'm in a Mac Forum.

Originally Posted by ChristophB

I wasn't preaching, I was confessing. I had to go to BestBuy also when I bought my BDP-S1. Paid $110+ US for the Monster brand because that's all they had. I also bought *gasp* 5 Blu-rays from a retail outlet! I find humor in the 2009s mocking what the 2006s. The curse of the early adopter. Btw, I owned a PS3 at launch and I already posted when I bought the Sony BDP player - the month it hit retail. BD is very cheap compared to early adopters of quality DVD players. I was there for VHS and LD, too.

It's pocket change. My analog interconnects are $500 a pair.

I apologize for the confusion I caused.

Originally Posted by kim kap sol

Who the shit still cares about Blu-ray...I can't believe some of you here are still enamored by such old tech. It's out but it's already old. Cheap high-density SD cards are going to replace Blu-ray within the next 3 years. I guarantee it.

Originally Posted by teckstud

People who want to own movie do not want to take up hard drive space on their computer. Why does no one get this? A movie is 2GB- 4 in HD for less than stellar quality.
All that space wasted on my hard drive - I don't think so.
For streaming- or renting - OK , I can understand Netflix. But for owning? NO. Give it to me on a disk. NOt some lame digital file on my hard drive.