Blu-ray chairman disagrees with Apple chief's assessment of format - Page 2

Excuse me but you seem to be the idiot. You apparently know nothing about Apple or else you wouldn't have made such a stupid statement. Apple is famous for NOT raising prices while at the same time improving the features and functions of the newest model (faster processors, more memory, speedier graphics, higher resolution screens) WITHOUT raising the price = providing even greater value! The other key factor about blu-ray is that the movies sold on these disks are ridiculously expensive! A ripoff by the studios. The benefit of watching blu-ray content on a smaller computer screen is minimal and not even worth arguing about. Its a large screen format.

Good night but for me it is mid afternoon

Yes, I'm sure you would have gotten behind a MICROSOFT backed format using a MICROSOFT codec.

You need to get your facts straight. And no, I don't really either stupid format due to its DRM and other crap BOTH formats had.

Wish the mac at least had Blu-Ray. It would be awesome to watch Blu-Ray movies on that giant screen.

Anyway, till then there's always my actual Blu-Ray player (part of my $30 Blu-Ray Sound Bar home theatre system). Or my brother's PS3. I don't know about others, but my family certainly gets more Blu-Ray movies from the movie store than iTunes rentals.

Well you can enjoy waiting a minute for the disc to load, I mean, for the disc to make sure you haven't "modified" your BD player, or update the firmware on your player to pointlessly patch the keys on it or be able to play the latest BS Java protection, or be forced to watch all the promos.

The rest of us will open up a file and be on our way

Personally, I think the main reason for no Blu Ray is that Stevo thinks it might eat into iTune video sales/rentals a little bit, and every little bit counts, so why offer the high image quality of Blu Ray, if you want people to buy movies from iTunes. The other arguments he offers sound pretty weak to me.

$30 for a plastic bumper.

You're welcome.

people buy blu ray movies, period, just like they bought dvds. my blu ray dvd collection is growing by the month. i use to buy dvds, now i buy blu ray cause the cost is similar if not less than dvd most of the time.

i like blu ray cause i want to have media that i can watch on my computer, watch on my big screen 1080p tv, and bring to work or wherever the heck i want, without having to pay apple for hardware so that i can do the same thing with digital movies (ie apple tv). i don't want to worry about a huge digital movie collection stored on an unreliable hard drive. i also don't wanna have to worry about backing up that prospective digital movie collection on other hard drives to secure my investment. i have enough data i need to back up as it is, terabytes and terabytes of it. i want my movies on stable blu ray discs that i can take anywhere. there isn't a day that goes by where i don't want to watch a movie on one of my 4 macs, and those movies just happen to be blu ray, not digital downloads and not dvd. how come every other computer manufacturer has a blu ray drive option? how the heck did they get around the "licensing issues" and software bugs? how come they allow their customers the ability to watch dvds, blu ray, and digital media on their computers?

i think its absurd to say that blu ray is a dying format and that everyone wants to download movies to their computer right now. i don't know ONE person that downloads movies to their computers as part of their movie collection, not one person. maybe music, a tv show, music video, podcast, or maybe a movie rental here and there for car trip, plane trip, or vacation, etc, but not their movie collection. and even if downloading our movies is in the near future, which it obviously is, we should still have a choice right now! not everybody is going to download their movies!

to me its really simple. blu ray drives should have been in all macs right from the get-go. apple is the largest tech company now. they have the ability to make blu ray happen if they wanted to, but they don't, which in my opinion is completely retarded and unbelievably annoying. jobs is trying to force people like me into downloading my movies. you can't do that!! he should be giving consumers a choice; dvd, blu ray, or digital download. thats it, give the public the option to choose. this shouldn't be a dicatorship!!

Ya reckon when SJ watches HD content on his home theater he uses garbage quality iTunes downloads? He'd be better off using Redbox DVD rentals and one of those up-scalers Toshiba used to dump through Wal-mart.

While I appreciate the Mac owner's desire for Blu-ray movie playback, can you imagine what an Apple branded solution would cost? I'm a huge fan of disney who is putting Blu-ray, DVD, and a digital copy in one blue case.

I use an iPod, an iPad, an iPhone and of course iTunes. I don't buy content from iTtnes when quality matters which includes music; rather I buy hybrid SACD or CD and ripping it lossless when jt needs to be mobile. Big Steve is right about the average consumer digging convenience. I'm far above Steve's target market in this case.

Holy balls! You're not supended or banned yet?

Remember the ludicrous "Format Wars" between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? A huge marketing hype to get consumers that don't know better to buy into one format or the other?

And then, there were the rest of us that realized that the format wars had been been won, by downloadable or streaming content online, long before HD-DVD bowed out of the competition.

You are going t dismiss a format because it takes an extra minute to load a movie while ignoring. The hour or two it takes to download and or rip a movie

No need for the ad-hom.


I guess the now-$700 Mac Mini is excluded from this trend.

(Actually, I can't think of a single tech/CE company that has raised prices other than for volatile components like memory or displays. So Apple is hardly standing out here.)

Interesting what people will read into a comment. No, I didn't buy into HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, and I won't. High definition video downloads aren't quite ready for prime time, but they are coming. That's one reason why Blu-ray doesn't have a long term future. I don't know if there will be another physical HD video format, but if there is, like I said, there won't be any moving parts. I think that something like that could blow Blu-ray out of the water. We'll see. Anyway, I rarely buy movies anymore; I just rent them from Netflix. I'm a first adopter of a lot of things, but I'm not likely to move to Blue-ray.

When you can legally download a movie that is even in the ballpark quality wise then you can talk, till then it is just vaporware

If it weren't for DRM and greedy license models, you could walk into a store with your 8GB thumb drive and load up on any rental movie you want in any "industry approved" format available. Well I spose you might need 32GB if your going the exact format of blu ray. Think about it:

- Environmental impact of all those optical media ELIMINATED
- Cost of new formats greatly decreased since the political license-technology war is moot
- New formats solidified much more quickly due to lack of aforementioned politics
- Stupid, bulky DVD packaging gone forever
- Convenience of loading (and UNLOADING, since it's easy to load) new movies via whatever medium you choose

But OH NOeeessss people might copy it. One day there will be no DRM. In the meantime, the consumer (and often the artist) continues to get slammed. I can't even copy music I made to my friends cause my damn iPod won't let me. Those who copy will continue to copy, with greater ease every day. Those who purchase will continue to purchase, with a small atrophy of those who only buy because they weren't savvy enough to copy. You can't stop the inevitable. You can only criminalize your customer base. Good luck DRM!

I do believe downloadable content will eventually take over. But for the next 5 years all Steve's comment does for me is swap the "bag of hurt" that is Blu-Ray for the "bag of hurt" that is Comcast. When am I going to get that cheap connection that lets me easily pull down 25 Gig (or whatever the exact figure is) high-def movies quickly, without stalls in the connection, and without hitting my bandwidth cap? I'm not seeing it soon.

The downloadable content and players (so far) haven't kept up with lossless audio either, at least not anything I've seen.

It's distressing that expectations of quality have actually gone down in regards to media since everything shifted to digital. Twenty five years ago we had CDs, and while they were hardly perfect they're certainly better than the lower-bitrate audio files being sold by the billions today (often at the same price as those on CDs). And video quality is suffering the same set-backs in regards to readily-available formats, namely 1080p. It will be a long time (and a lot of dollars both in bandwidth costs and outright purchase) before downloads match BD quality. Yet this is what people are willing to settle for.

The hardware necessary to support BDs is already bought and paid for inside your Macs, with only a marginal change to commodity components. The licensing and DRM is a sad fact of life, but much of it is a one-time cost that is dwarfed by the bandwidth costs that would go into downloading a few month's worth of 720p. For computers that can already spin a 12cm round piece of plastic it's stupid to not offer BluRay as an option.

You do know there's another way...right?

Yeeessssssss

I've never seen a Blu-Ray movie. I'm sure they look great but how great and at what price? I really enjoy DVDs on my computer. My 23" DVI connected screen at 1900 X 1080 plays those discs great. How much sharper can a video be? If I knew someone with a Blu-Ray screen I'd ask them to show me the same movie in Blu-Ray and DVD. I'd go rent the same movie in DVD format if they didn't have it just so I could see the difference.

It seems that vinyl records lasted quite a long time. At first they were made of brittle plastic of some sort. The grove was mono. Stereo groves were then invented and put onto the discs. Then they were made in durable flexible vinyl.

Eight track tapes came out and yet vinyl records endured. Cassette tapes came out and killed eight track tapes. Cassettes lasted twenty years on the market. Compact Discs (CD) came out and are still here. Digital copies have been around a few years and digital downloads are still growing as CDs are trailing.

DVDs are a great medium but they are in the same boat as CDs it's just taking longer for the market to get into saving or buying digital copies of movies. Maybe that won't happen as fast. If DVDs go away for digital downloads I don't think Blu-Ray will last any longer.

The thing I hate about CDs, CD ROMs, and DVDs is they degrade due to oxidation of the aluminum inside them. There are companies that make discs with gold as the recording medium. Since gold doesn't tarnish those should last as long as the plastic lasts. They cost a fortune.

My life is just fine without Blu-Ray discs. Perhaps they'll just end up being for videophiles.

Too many things in life are about price not quality. That is why I think Blu-Ray is destined to fail.

Can someone nail SJ down on a date for download dominance? That might help us along our journey. Can he provide links from universal, warner, disney, sony, lions gate, et al with confirmation? Can he also provide assurance that they'll come together on a DRM-free distribution model and pricing structure?

Serously, he's talking about a wish. No one has the timeline for building the network infra or the consumer adoption. If it did exist today, who here wouldn't be bitching about the insane price or the network provider chosen by the exalted one?

Personally, I think that the true replacement for DVD is Flash sticks -- reusable, stable and cheap.

what's not to like?

your right, it is BS.

Apple has record profits, high margins and god forbid they actually develop a computer with

1- Blu-Ray
2- HDMI output (with mini Displayport also) for computers like laptops so when on road, you can do HD on external monitors. hell Mac Mini has both, why not a MBP?

Jobs excuses are lame, Apple is rolling in the cash. They could make this tech optional and even pass along the costs to consumers. god forbid they actually give the consumers who want it a choice.

the end result is clear, Apple is stonewalling Blu-Ray for protection of the ITunes movie store. Never mind that many consumers of Apple products own or rent BD content. We don't need apple to manipulate this to protect their corporate agenda. this is bordering on anti-trust.

Duplication on Blu-ray disc physical media <= $0.25 US for 50GB. It's the content that costs. Expected post-box office sales is part of what finances the original motion picture. What's a 32GB flash drive run these days?

The recent Mac Mini release would say you are wrong.

Well the price of them is high, and they are poor quality

8 GB? I have to assume you are trying to be funny as that is nowhere near enough for BR

I can think of no better way to spend an afternoon than at a movie kiosk waiting two hours for my 40GB movie to finish copying to a USB thumbdrive, only to get home and discover that the file is corrupt or incompatible with my device.

They don't play all my old DVD's along with the current Blu-ray disc like my Blu-ray player does.

Be sure you're viewing these images at 100% on your 1920x1080 display to get the full effect: This is DVD, and this is Blu-Ray. If you saw the world the way DVD looks, the optometrist would give you corrective lenses. Regarding cost, the DVD will run you $19.99 and the Blu-Ray will run you...$19.99. You're flushing money down the toilet if you're still buying DVDs when you can get 6x the picture quality for usually the same price.

Huh, last time I have checked Apple did rise its price on every new iteration of the Mac Mini, by no less than $100 each time. It started at $499 in 2005 and is now at $699. I wonder who seem to be an "idiot" now: insulting others while being wrong.

very good point.

Not a flame - a sincere question. Where are you finding Blu-Ray for the same cost? Everywhere I look (Best Buy, Cost Co), the store is charging $5 to $6 more for the Blu-Ray.

I'd gladly buy the Blu-Ray version if it was the same price. Blu-ray is definitely better quality than the HD my cable company provides. Avatar looked great, too bad the movie itself was crap.

Amazon dot com, in this case. The blu-ray's aren't always cheaper, mind you, but so long as the DVD isn't a bare-bones single disc they're either the same price or within a couple bucks of eachother.

How does Apple make their optical drives?
Minimalist slot drives.
How have you seen already existing Blu-Ray drives?
Complicated trays with doors.
Maybe it's not so far-fetched that they would have to redesign or get the licensing to comply with their trademark disc drive style. A combination of design and licensing problems?

I have bought almost 200 BD films since early 2007. I see them on a projector on a 107'' screen or sometimes on my pc 30'' 2560x1600 monitor.

The picture quality is awesome and the sound is even better.

I would never go back to dvd quality except sometimes for movie rentals when I find no alternative. I rent out of convenience but I find the quality to give a lacking experience. And 720p with lacking audio isn't good enough for me, I'll take it as an alternative any day but not as my main movie experience.

Last week my old PS3 broke down. If I could I would have replaced it with the new macmini (running xbmc on OSX), however its 13 year old technology and I was forced to buy a new PS3 instead.

Another thing is that I would like to author my home videos from my HD cam into own BD discs with Apple I can't enjoy them on my computer.

I really like my apple MBP but I do feel Steve and Apple setting iTunes profit over my need as a consumer and that makes me sad, I dont want my mac saga to discontinue.

If it were a technical issue, Steve or Apple would have said so. Instead, he's suggesting that blu-ray is like an audio format that never took off (blu-ray has the same adoption rate as DVD did), and that we don't need it anyway because we can all watch free HD movies from Hulu whoever we'd like. Steve is living in a fantasy world.

Thank you soooo much for posting that. I could always tell the difference between a 480p movie trailer and the 720p movie trailer downloads on my 13" macbook. Now that I have a 1440p capable 27" iMac I'd love Blu-Ray to up their resolution but make no mistake I can certainly tell the difference between crappy dvd quality and the beauty that is bluray, on any size screen. I can stream all my video content to my iphone and even on my 3GS iPhone I could tell the difference between an avi 480p quality video file and an MKV 720p file. The difference in clarity is just way to obvious. I don't understand people who are so geeked about downloading/streaming. It is a horrible experience for the most part. I once decided to try out the HD content on my PS3 and it took forever to download, and then I only had 24hrs to watch it. I would have rather gotten in the car and driven to the video store. The biggest problem with streaming, at least here in the USA is bandwidth as many have pointed out already. I was just watching Iron Eagle on netflix, and while the quality was pretty crappy to begin with, it gets to the last 15 minutes of the movie and rebuffered to an even crappier quality. things were so pixelated you couldn't see peoples faces. I hate being subjugated to the capabilities of my internet connection. then there is the issue with availability. As another mentioned, try finding six movies available in HD that have ever been in a movie theater. As for the cost of BluRay, I can already walk into a Best Buy and find popular titles for 9.99 and all of them were major films released in actual movie theaters. This far into DVD's existence they were still selling for a lot more than that. I actually work at a Best Buy and the BD's have been getting so cheap that I get a better deal buying the ones on sale than using my employee discount. Maybe when we have affordable internet speeds in the 200MB/s range, and content is available in the quality of BR and at the same time as BR content, then maybe I might see some purpose in streaming/downloading, but till then there is no substitute for BR and Apple should support it. IF sub $800 Dell's/Sony's can support it then certainly Apple should be able to find a way.

Exactly. At this juncture it's a pipedream. The day when I can come home on a Tuesday and stream any of that week's new releases in true HD for a low monthly rate is a long, long ways off. Physical media is the only space where movies are avaible on release day, with perfect picture and sound, and will remain available indefinitely. The digital space is a mess of HD-lite movies for blu-ray prices, movies available only in SD, movies available only to rent, movies available only for 90 days, and movies not available at all. And thats only if you have the bandwidth, which most of the population does not.