I think discs are more convenient than downloads. You don't have to store the wads of GBs on your HDDs and you can quickly move the disc between your computer and your home theater's DVD/BD player.
Amen.
Also, just for the record, Apple's iTunes HD actually is quite a bit lower quality. The bitrate is much lower, partly for hardware requirements (the AppleTV cannot handle true 720p). To achieve the lower bitrate, the compression was increased and frames were dropped. The compression artifacts are pretty noticeable in fast-paced action. Somebody who works with videowas able to spot it in about 5 seconds.
But I just happen to disagree with Apple on their vision of the future. Jobs thinks that in the future, everybody will want to watch movies and TV on their iPad. Personally if I want to watch TV, I'll do it on a 47" LCD screen @ 240 Hz, not on a 9" screen. He also thinks that nobody will want to buy media content or software from one company, and run them all on a closed ecosystem, all controlled by the same company?1980 anyone?
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Apple doesn't offer it, so it's not needed. What's there is good enough for us.
I think you are mischaracterizing why people don't Like Blu Ray and by extension Sony. The excess control is on thing that people object to, especially region encoding. There is also a huge issue of convience, which is to say CD type optical disks are a pain in the ass.
Quote:
Steve has made up his mind and anyone who doubts him must be reprimanded. Greet the future! Now featuring digital distribution systems that offer vastly inferior quality and are only available in one country on earth, hooray!
I'm not sure what that noise was all about but there are significant advantages to the digital approach. The only real hold up is digital storage densities, which is why many of us want to see Apple yank out the CD drive and give us wads of storage space internal to our laptops.
Quote:
This is boring. Anyone want to seriously discuss Blu-Ray? Anyone?
Seriously, for many Blu Ray is a waste of money. Not all of us are into bug screen TVs and thus have other usage patterns when it comes to media consumption.
Second Blu Ray is very expensive, undeservidly so. This is a big factor in my case and I suspect others. Because let's face it you can often go to a real movie three or four time for the cost of a Blu Ray disk. They are very expensive once you consider that movies are seldom watched again.
Third some of the best stuff out there isn't in high def anyways. So what is the point if you are into old movies, classics and such?
Fourth the lack of alternative distribution systems isn't Apples fault. In fact if there was a service offering alternative purchase and downloads of movies and shows I'd make use of it. The problem is many of these services are limited in many ways.
As to iPad, I'm not sure what Apple was thinking there. That is I dint think movies where the first thing on their minds. That mostly due to the aspect ratio. So even Apples current downloads are more than good enough for iPad, even the standard def files as sad as that is.
Sixth is the reality that much of the stuff on a CD these days is crap and Blu Ray just adds more. All I really want to see is the movie in question. Thankfully that is what electronic distribution gives me.
Seven I don't deny the quality of the latest big screen TVs. However I don't have one and right now I'm not in a rush to get one. So even if I had a set of movies that I thought would be worth the exense of Blu Ray I have no place to view them and likely won't for some time. The reality is most Mac users lives don't revolve around viewing movies in this manner. A Blu Ray drive in my MBP would be as wasted as my DVD drive is now. So we are back to square one and really need for Apple to get rid of the optical drives altogether.
3) I don't understand this desire for Blu-ray on a PC. It's a home theater technology. There was a time when CDs and DVDs had a great cost-to-MB ratio for consumers, but that time is gone and Blu-ray in computers is simply an expensive option, that offers little to no benefit with plenty of negatives to go along with it.
Obviously you haven't priced this in awhile. I can go to newegg and buy an internal 4x BRD for $60. That's a 3.5" not a 2.5" and I'm not sure what the costs would be like for a laptop size, but that should be a $100 BTO option. I can easily imagine a MacMini with a BRD, 1TBHD and 4GB RAM. Hook it up to your TV, include some form of DVR and you have an all-in-one home theater solution.
People want to be able to watch Blu Rays on their PC b/c of a variety of reasons. I'm pondering buying a drive so I can watch my Blu Rays where my 2 daughters won't get at them and screw them up
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
Then there is the UX issues that have to be dealt with, like using a Blu-ray player to watch a movie on a long flight just to find that the battery dies before you get to the ending.
Apple is quoting us 7 and 8 hours of battery life on their laptops, unless your power was already low or it was the 4th movie you watched on an extremely long flight, how would this be happening?
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
6) BRDs are not selling well in the non-Mac PC space. Other vendors offer them but they build systems that allow for the option of cheap BRDs. Apple doesn't have that luxury since they have a 9.5mm ultra-slim slot-loading optical drive.
As mentioned above, the full size 3.5" BRD is only $60 for the end user to buy at Newegg. A laptop version could easily be a $100 BTO.
Obviously you haven't priced this in awhile. I can go to newegg and buy an internal 4x BRD for $60. That's a 3.5" not a 2.5" and I'm not sure what the costs would be like for a laptop size, but that should be a $100 BTO option.
1) The 3.5" and 2.5" size specifically refer HDDs and SSDs. Due to the disc size a player is going to be at least 5"x5".
2) I wish it were as easy as taking the cheapest desktop ODD and then doubling the price. Not all ODDs for notebooks are built the same. Most are 12.7mm tall but Apple uses 9.5mm drives. Most are tray-loading but Apple uses slot-loading. Plus, Apple doesn't use the cheapest possible HW and becomes responsible for repairs which all factor into the cost. I haven't seen a compatible drive for their notebooks, at any price.
3) The more power you use the less battery time you have. A DVD will kill your battery abd that is without the extra power and processing for Blu-Ray media. The smart thing to do is copy your DVD movies to your HDD. You save a lot of power that way. Even more if you move it to NAND. Even booting Mac OS X off an SD card can give you a significant boost.
1) The 3.5" and 2.5" size specifically refer HDDs and SSDs. Due to the disc size a player is going to be at least 5"x5".
2) I wish it were as easy as taking the cheapest desktop ODD and then doubling the price. Not all ODDs for notebooks are built the same. Most are 12.7mm tall but Apple uses 9.5mm drives. Most are tray-loading but Apple uses slot-loading. Plus, Apple doesn't use the cheapest possible HW and becomes responsible for repairs which all factor into the cost. I haven't seen a compatible drive for their notebooks, at any price.
3) The more power you use the less battery time you have. A DVD will kill your battery abd that is without the extra power and processing for Blu-Ray media. The smart thing to do is copy your DVD movies to your HDD. You save a lot of power that way. Even more if you move it to NAND. Even booting Mac OS X off an SD card can give you a significant boost.
1)The 3.5 and 2.5 refers specifically to drive height. What is the drive height on the drives used on Macbooks? 2.5? 1.8? I'm aware of the layout size of the drive, I was speaking to height.
2)12.7mm = 1.27cm = .508" 9.5mm = .95cm = .38" I'm less knowledgeable about laptop parts and have largely dealt with desktops. This seems a bit on the small side to me, but I'll freely admit I could be wrong about that. Just b/c the hardware is inexpensive does not mean it is shoddy. I have had nothing but positive experiences w/Lite-On and I've always heard pretty low return rates on their stuff. You just aren't paying for the Sony or Plextor name which always jacked things in the past.
3)I seriously doubt that a single Blu Ray movie will burn thru an entire MacBook's battery. No one ever said it wasn't a much better use of power to have a movie stored on flash memory. I'm also curious to find out exactly how much more power drain is involved watching a Blu Ray vs watching the DVD of the same movie in the same player.
1)The 3.5 and 2.5 refers specifically to drive height. What is the drive height on the drives used on Macbooks? 2.5? 1.8? I'm aware of the layout size of the drive, I was speaking to height.
2)12.7mm = 1.27cm = .508" 9.5mm = .95cm = .38" I'm less knowledgeable about laptop parts and have largely dealt with desktops. This seems a bit on the small side to me, but I'll freely admit I could be wrong about that. Just b/c the hardware is inexpensive does not mean it is shoddy. I have had nothing but positive experiences w/Lite-On and I've always heard pretty low return rates on their stuff. You just aren't paying for the Sony or Plextor name which always jacked things in the past.
3)I seriously doubt that a single Blu Ray movie will burn thru an entire MacBook's battery. No one ever said it wasn't a much better use of power to have a movie stored on flash memory. I'm also curious to find out exactly how much more power drain is involved watching a Blu Ray vs watching the DVD of the same movie in the same player.
1) I think desktops are a standard height as their no need to go with thinner components. Laptop parts have been getting thinner a Apple is usually on the cusp of this shrinkage hih makes the BRD inclusion harder for them, hence my comments and queries.
2) Most 2.5" (wide) HDDs are 9.5mm in notebooks. Their are also 12.7mm drives but they are more often just regulated to external portable drives. They are thicker due to the extra platter in them for extra capacity. SSDs, at from Intel, are only 7mm with a 2.5mm spacer to fit in most notebooks. There is even a HDD that matches that 7mm height by removing a platter. ODDs have followed suit. There is even a 7mm ODD in the market, but it's bit Blu-ray.
3) A modern Mac would likely be fine. I was going by reviews of non-Mac notebooks likely with 5 hour batteries that are only 3 hours real world use and have that with Blu-ray.
1)The 3.5 and 2.5 refers specifically to drive height. What is the drive height on the drives used on Macbooks? 2.5? 1.8? I'm aware of the layout size of the drive, I was speaking to height.
How can 3.5" and 2.5" refer to drive height? Think about how big 2.5" is. Have you seen a hard drive with that height?
This thread is about GPUs and you are whining about Blue Ray. wtf
Too add some whining that is more appropriate to the thread.
It seems to be quite unlikely that we get faster ATI GPUs but instead Apple will use the in comparison for the TDP slower Nvidia GPUs as they are the only ones that support Optimus. They could rework the driver model and enable easier switching between ATI and Intel GPU but that is more than unlikely and would never be as seemless.
I guess the 13" will get a 310M as a dedicated (so nobody can complain about slower graphics) or only the Intel HD(which is almost as fast as the 9400M).
The 15" probably only a 330M with 512 and 1GB GDDR3.
But (and here comes my wishful thinking) I want a 350M (still reasonable TDP and a serious performance increase not like the 330M, and almost ATI level performance) and 1GB GDDR3 even in the cheaper configuration.
And concerning the blue ray stuff. They really just should remove the Optical drive and offer some external drive, in which case it would be no problem to get a blue ray one. Although I can understand that other people might not like this solution as not everybody uses Internet sources only for watching movies. I always stream and don't care about quality. If I want a good experience I go to the cinema with friends which is much more fun anyway.
Comments
I think discs are more convenient than downloads. You don't have to store the wads of GBs on your HDDs and you can quickly move the disc between your computer and your home theater's DVD/BD player.
Amen.
Also, just for the record, Apple's iTunes HD actually is quite a bit lower quality. The bitrate is much lower, partly for hardware requirements (the AppleTV cannot handle true 720p). To achieve the lower bitrate, the compression was increased and frames were dropped. The compression artifacts are pretty noticeable in fast-paced action. Somebody who works with videowas able to spot it in about 5 seconds.
But I just happen to disagree with Apple on their vision of the future. Jobs thinks that in the future, everybody will want to watch movies and TV on their iPad. Personally if I want to watch TV, I'll do it on a 47" LCD screen @ 240 Hz, not on a 9" screen. He also thinks that nobody will want to buy media content or software from one company, and run them all on a closed ecosystem, all controlled by the same company?1980 anyone?
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Apple doesn't offer it, so it's not needed. What's there is good enough for us.
I think you are mischaracterizing why people don't Like Blu Ray and by extension Sony. The excess control is on thing that people object to, especially region encoding. There is also a huge issue of convience, which is to say CD type optical disks are a pain in the ass.
Steve has made up his mind and anyone who doubts him must be reprimanded. Greet the future! Now featuring digital distribution systems that offer vastly inferior quality and are only available in one country on earth, hooray!
I'm not sure what that noise was all about but there are significant advantages to the digital approach. The only real hold up is digital storage densities, which is why many of us want to see Apple yank out the CD drive and give us wads of storage space internal to our laptops.
This is boring. Anyone want to seriously discuss Blu-Ray? Anyone?
Seriously, for many Blu Ray is a waste of money. Not all of us are into bug screen TVs and thus have other usage patterns when it comes to media consumption.
Second Blu Ray is very expensive, undeservidly so. This is a big factor in my case and I suspect others. Because let's face it you can often go to a real movie three or four time for the cost of a Blu Ray disk. They are very expensive once you consider that movies are seldom watched again.
Third some of the best stuff out there isn't in high def anyways. So what is the point if you are into old movies, classics and such?
Fourth the lack of alternative distribution systems isn't Apples fault. In fact if there was a service offering alternative purchase and downloads of movies and shows I'd make use of it. The problem is many of these services are limited in many ways.
As to iPad, I'm not sure what Apple was thinking there. That is I dint think movies where the first thing on their minds. That mostly due to the aspect ratio. So even Apples current downloads are more than good enough for iPad, even the standard def files as sad as that is.
Sixth is the reality that much of the stuff on a CD these days is crap and Blu Ray just adds more. All I really want to see is the movie in question. Thankfully that is what electronic distribution gives me.
Seven I don't deny the quality of the latest big screen TVs. However I don't have one and right now I'm not in a rush to get one. So even if I had a set of movies that I thought would be worth the exense of Blu Ray I have no place to view them and likely won't for some time. The reality is most Mac users lives don't revolve around viewing movies in this manner. A Blu Ray drive in my MBP would be as wasted as my DVD drive is now. So we are back to square one and really need for Apple to get rid of the optical drives altogether.
Dave
3) I don't understand this desire for Blu-ray on a PC. It's a home theater technology. There was a time when CDs and DVDs had a great cost-to-MB ratio for consumers, but that time is gone and Blu-ray in computers is simply an expensive option, that offers little to no benefit with plenty of negatives to go along with it.
Obviously you haven't priced this in awhile. I can go to newegg and buy an internal 4x BRD for $60. That's a 3.5" not a 2.5" and I'm not sure what the costs would be like for a laptop size, but that should be a $100 BTO option. I can easily imagine a MacMini with a BRD, 1TBHD and 4GB RAM. Hook it up to your TV, include some form of DVR and you have an all-in-one home theater solution.
People want to be able to watch Blu Rays on their PC b/c of a variety of reasons. I'm pondering buying a drive so I can watch my Blu Rays where my 2 daughters won't get at them and screw them up
Then there is the UX issues that have to be dealt with, like using a Blu-ray player to watch a movie on a long flight just to find that the battery dies before you get to the ending.
Apple is quoting us 7 and 8 hours of battery life on their laptops, unless your power was already low or it was the 4th movie you watched on an extremely long flight, how would this be happening?
6) BRDs are not selling well in the non-Mac PC space. Other vendors offer them but they build systems that allow for the option of cheap BRDs. Apple doesn't have that luxury since they have a 9.5mm ultra-slim slot-loading optical drive.
As mentioned above, the full size 3.5" BRD is only $60 for the end user to buy at Newegg. A laptop version could easily be a $100 BTO.
Obviously you haven't priced this in awhile. I can go to newegg and buy an internal 4x BRD for $60. That's a 3.5" not a 2.5" and I'm not sure what the costs would be like for a laptop size, but that should be a $100 BTO option.
1) The 3.5" and 2.5" size specifically refer HDDs and SSDs. Due to the disc size a player is going to be at least 5"x5".
2) I wish it were as easy as taking the cheapest desktop ODD and then doubling the price. Not all ODDs for notebooks are built the same. Most are 12.7mm tall but Apple uses 9.5mm drives. Most are tray-loading but Apple uses slot-loading. Plus, Apple doesn't use the cheapest possible HW and becomes responsible for repairs which all factor into the cost. I haven't seen a compatible drive for their notebooks, at any price.
3) The more power you use the less battery time you have. A DVD will kill your battery abd that is without the extra power and processing for Blu-Ray media. The smart thing to do is copy your DVD movies to your HDD. You save a lot of power that way. Even more if you move it to NAND. Even booting Mac OS X off an SD card can give you a significant boost.
1) The 3.5" and 2.5" size specifically refer HDDs and SSDs. Due to the disc size a player is going to be at least 5"x5".
2) I wish it were as easy as taking the cheapest desktop ODD and then doubling the price. Not all ODDs for notebooks are built the same. Most are 12.7mm tall but Apple uses 9.5mm drives. Most are tray-loading but Apple uses slot-loading. Plus, Apple doesn't use the cheapest possible HW and becomes responsible for repairs which all factor into the cost. I haven't seen a compatible drive for their notebooks, at any price.
3) The more power you use the less battery time you have. A DVD will kill your battery abd that is without the extra power and processing for Blu-Ray media. The smart thing to do is copy your DVD movies to your HDD. You save a lot of power that way. Even more if you move it to NAND. Even booting Mac OS X off an SD card can give you a significant boost.
1)The 3.5 and 2.5 refers specifically to drive height. What is the drive height on the drives used on Macbooks? 2.5? 1.8? I'm aware of the layout size of the drive, I was speaking to height.
2)12.7mm = 1.27cm = .508" 9.5mm = .95cm = .38" I'm less knowledgeable about laptop parts and have largely dealt with desktops. This seems a bit on the small side to me, but I'll freely admit I could be wrong about that. Just b/c the hardware is inexpensive does not mean it is shoddy. I have had nothing but positive experiences w/Lite-On and I've always heard pretty low return rates on their stuff. You just aren't paying for the Sony or Plextor name which always jacked things in the past.
3)I seriously doubt that a single Blu Ray movie will burn thru an entire MacBook's battery. No one ever said it wasn't a much better use of power to have a movie stored on flash memory. I'm also curious to find out exactly how much more power drain is involved watching a Blu Ray vs watching the DVD of the same movie in the same player.
1)The 3.5 and 2.5 refers specifically to drive height. What is the drive height on the drives used on Macbooks? 2.5? 1.8? I'm aware of the layout size of the drive, I was speaking to height.
2)12.7mm = 1.27cm = .508" 9.5mm = .95cm = .38" I'm less knowledgeable about laptop parts and have largely dealt with desktops. This seems a bit on the small side to me, but I'll freely admit I could be wrong about that. Just b/c the hardware is inexpensive does not mean it is shoddy. I have had nothing but positive experiences w/Lite-On and I've always heard pretty low return rates on their stuff. You just aren't paying for the Sony or Plextor name which always jacked things in the past.
3)I seriously doubt that a single Blu Ray movie will burn thru an entire MacBook's battery. No one ever said it wasn't a much better use of power to have a movie stored on flash memory. I'm also curious to find out exactly how much more power drain is involved watching a Blu Ray vs watching the DVD of the same movie in the same player.
1) I think desktops are a standard height as their no need to go with thinner components. Laptop parts have been getting thinner a Apple is usually on the cusp of this shrinkage hih makes the BRD inclusion harder for them, hence my comments and queries.
2) Most 2.5" (wide) HDDs are 9.5mm in notebooks. Their are also 12.7mm drives but they are more often just regulated to external portable drives. They are thicker due to the extra platter in them for extra capacity. SSDs, at from Intel, are only 7mm with a 2.5mm spacer to fit in most notebooks. There is even a HDD that matches that 7mm height by removing a platter. ODDs have followed suit. There is even a 7mm ODD in the market, but it's bit Blu-ray.
3) A modern Mac would likely be fine. I was going by reviews of non-Mac notebooks likely with 5 hour batteries that are only 3 hours real world use and have that with Blu-ray.
1)The 3.5 and 2.5 refers specifically to drive height. What is the drive height on the drives used on Macbooks? 2.5? 1.8? I'm aware of the layout size of the drive, I was speaking to height.
How can 3.5" and 2.5" refer to drive height? Think about how big 2.5" is. Have you seen a hard drive with that height?
wedding photography & I make photo montage DVDs for the receptions occasionally. I have had
clients ask me for blu-ray discs instead of DVDs but I'd rather wait for a macbook pro that has
a built-in blu-ray burner. Even if it was as an option.
Too add some whining that is more appropriate to the thread.
It seems to be quite unlikely that we get faster ATI GPUs but instead Apple will use the in comparison for the TDP slower Nvidia GPUs as they are the only ones that support Optimus. They could rework the driver model and enable easier switching between ATI and Intel GPU but that is more than unlikely and would never be as seemless.
I guess the 13" will get a 310M as a dedicated (so nobody can complain about slower graphics) or only the Intel HD(which is almost as fast as the 9400M).
The 15" probably only a 330M with 512 and 1GB GDDR3.
But (and here comes my wishful thinking) I want a 350M (still reasonable TDP and a serious performance increase not like the 330M, and almost ATI level performance) and 1GB GDDR3 even in the cheaper configuration.
And concerning the blue ray stuff. They really just should remove the Optical drive and offer some external drive, in which case it would be no problem to get a blue ray one. Although I can understand that other people might not like this solution as not everybody uses Internet sources only for watching movies. I always stream and don't care about quality. If I want a good experience I go to the cinema with friends which is much more fun anyway.