I also find it ironic that Steve Jobs in on the Blu-ray board!
More like smart. Because he's getting the facts first hand. When he says that there's issues, that the licensing is too expensive and complex, he knows. Not 'he heard'
What is Apple doing as a member of the Blu-ray board? Smart would be for Steve Jobs to use Apple's position and influence to improve these issues rather than just sitting there and bitching about it, all the while trying to undermine Blu-ray. How would Apple like its own board members publicly making negative comments about Apple?
What is Apple doing as a member of the Blu-ray board? Smart would be for Steve Jobs to use Apple's position and influence to improve these issues rather than just sitting there and bitching about it, all the while trying to undermine Blu-ray. How would Apple like its own board members publicly making negative comments about Apple?
Sadly, there are no issues left to resolve. They have all been done; the licensing issue (originally referred to by SJ as a "bag of hurt"), were simplified. Technical challenges..whilst I am not in the know...every other manufacturer has found a solution - without increasing the price.
I think it is simple: Blu-ray competes with the Apple online store and they would not be able to charge more to absorb the licensing. That's it.
Oh - SJ got his seat as part of the Disney/Pixar Studios acquisition. Amazing that a company like Disney would allow him to do this! Having kids, Blu-ray movies are big in our house...especially Disney ones.
Sadly, there are no issues left to resolve. They have all been done; the licensing issue (originally referred to by SJ as a "bag of hurt"), were simplified. Technical challenges..whilst I am not in the know...every other manufacturer has found a solution - without increasing the price.
I think it is simple: Blu-ray competes with the Apple online store and they would not be able to charge more to absorb the licensing. That's it.
That seems to be pretty much it. Jobs wants downloads to prevail. It's their new business model, and they're going to follow that road no matter what. I just hope that at some point he won't have a choice, and will do it.
what are these expensive licensing issues? you can get blu-ray as an option on every cheapo dell and HP computer. It's $100 or so for the drive and the player software is included.
there have been blu-ray software players since the windows XP days. all you needed was a graphics card with HDCP compliant drivers. nvidia and ATI both made their drivers for all their cards hdcp compliant years ago
Sadly, there are no issues left to resolve. They have all been done; the licensing issue (originally referred to by SJ as a "bag of hurt"), were simplified. Technical challenges..whilst I am not in the know...every other manufacturer has found a solution - without increasing the price.
I think it is simple: Blu-ray competes with the Apple online store and they would not be able to charge more to absorb the licensing. That's it.
Oh - SJ got his seat as part of the Disney/Pixar Studios acquisition. Amazing that a company like Disney would allow him to do this! Having kids, Blu-ray movies are big in our house...especially Disney ones.
I have disputed this argument countless times... Here we go again: BR does NOT compete with the ITS. Just like CDs and DVDs don't compete with the ITS (following your logic, Apple would have to leave the Superdrive out of their computers entirely - not just because it's obsolete, though it is, but because it competes with the ITS). The ITS is all about convenience, not quality - you'll get a digital download, which is convenient because you don't have to leave your house to get a new movie, but its quality will be pretty terrible compared to BR (720p with compression artefacts). BR, on the other hand, is all about quality. The customer who downloads a movie in the ITS is not the same kind of customer who's interested in buying a BR and watching it on a great FullHD-screen. Just saying.
You anti-BR people should also consider the facts that digital distribution only exists in a very rudimentary form (no 1080p!) in ONE SINGLE COUNTRY so far. Only one subset of Apple-users, namely Americans, can buy movies from Apple at this point in time. This just proves that digital distribution still has a veeery long way to go. I agree that it's the future, but that future is at least five years away, and until it arrives (worldwide availability of ITS-movies in 1080p or better), Blu-Ray is king.
And please don't act like Apple are trailblazers eschewing a stillborn technology. If they were truly serious about the death of optical media yadda yadda yadda they should just go ahead and put their money where their mouth is, which means getting rid of the obsolete Superdrive and preparing the user for a future without optical drives in computers. As much as I want BR, I'd really respect that move and it would open up a lot of new and exciting possibilities. However, they're still putting that obsolete piece of junk into every Mac except the MBA, which indicates to me that they're not very serious about all this. They're just lazy, or they don't care.
what are these expensive licensing issues? you can get blu-ray as an option on every cheapo dell and HP computer. It's $100 or so for the drive and the player software is included.
there have been blu-ray software players since the windows XP days. all you needed was a graphics card with HDCP compliant drivers. nvidia and ATI both made their drivers for all their cards hdcp compliant years ago
I think most of that is just smoke and mirrors. The additional cost (or even the option for it) would be pretty minimal I would think. They could easily make the BD optional so the end user decides to upgrade and pays the additional costs. The hardware is standard SATA/ATAPI. They woudl have to build the capability into OS X which may not be as trivial, but you would think they already have something on a shelf somewhere to do this.
I think melgross has it right. It would cut into Apple's iTunes movie profit. The drives themselves are not substantially different than typical optical drives, other than the laser being used, and all of that is 'black-box' for the OS. It just has to detect an ATAPI SATA drive there, be that DVD-RW, or BD-RW.
I have disputed this argument countless times... Here we go again: BR does NOT compete with the ITS. Just like CDs and DVDs don't compete with the ITS (following your logic, Apple would have to leave the Superdrive out of their computers entirely - not just because it's obsolete, though it is, but because it competes with the ITS). The ITS is all about convenience, not quality - you'll get a digital download, which is convenient because you don't have to leave your house to get a new movie, but its quality will be pretty terrible compared to BR (720p with compression artefacts). BR, on the other hand, is all about quality. The customer who downloads a movie in the ITS is not the same kind of customer who's interested in buying a BR and watching it on a great FullHD-screen. Just saying.
You anti-BR people should also consider the facts that digital distribution only exists in a very rudimentary form (no 1080p!) in ONE SINGLE COUNTRY so far. Only one subset of Apple-users, namely Americans, can buy movies from Apple at this point in time. This just proves that digital distribution still has a veeery long way to go. I agree that it's the future, but that future is at least five years away, and until it arrives (worldwide availability of ITS-movies in 1080p or better), Blu-Ray is king.
And please don't act like Apple are trailblazers eschewing a stillborn technology. If they were truly serious about the death of optical media yadda yadda yadda they should just go ahead and put their money where their mouth is, which means getting rid of the obsolete Superdrive and preparing the user for a future without optical drives in computers. As much as I want BR, I'd really respect that move and it would open up a lot of new and exciting possibilities. However, they're still putting that obsolete piece of junk into every Mac except the MBA, which indicates to me that they're not very serious about all this. They're just lazy, or they don't care.
Hmmm. CD's do compete with iTunes. What iTunes does very well, and why I converted, was the ability to download one track and not an entire album.
If all I could do was download albums in iTunes...I'd buy the CD.
I believe the SuperDrive was included with Mac's before the Store allowed movie downloads. Perhaps they will remove it in the future to stop the competition.
That said; the SuperDrive does have it's place (I'd also favor a separate external drive though - including blu-ray). Let's say you go and buy FCP. How you going to install it? Download? No chance! Way to big.
what are these expensive licensing issues? you can get blu-ray as an option on every cheapo dell and HP computer. It's $100 or so for the drive and the player software is included.
there have been blu-ray software players since the windows XP days. all you needed was a graphics card with HDCP compliant drivers. nvidia and ATI both made their drivers for all their cards hdcp compliant years ago
You're quoting the price of a 1/2 height (~1.75" thick) desktop BD reader, most of Apple's computers don't have space for them inside. I can't find a 9.5mm *slot loading* drive that would work in an Apple notebook.
Apple hardware supports HDCP, you can install Windows on a Mac Pro and play BD content just fine. I wonder if Apple doesn't offer a way for third party software makers to use HDCP in OS X.
I had this exact problem. If you scroll to the top of the list of resolutions in Display preferences (with your TV plugged in), you'll see the proper HDTV resolutions, 720i, 1080i, 1080p, etc. They even have a little TV icon next to them, shame they're hidden. Make sure your TV doesn't have some kind of screen zooming on too.
It sounds like you are suffering from overscan.
Due to legacy reasons, some TVs don't show the entire screen image. Part of the screen image is off beyond the visible borders of the screen. Some fine tuning with the driver/desktop settings perhaps?
10% overscan is typical. Results vary depending on TV + video chipset.
BluRay, like Flash, is just a placeholder, while better things develop.
To not understand this, is to be left behind. I don't care that average AV heads don't get it, I'm just glad Apple does.
Being able to see more than 3 years into the future is why Apple is where they are, with what they have.
That doesn't alter the fact that you are depriving yourself while you wait. The problems that arise with BluRay don't disappear just because the physical media does. Apple will probably have to make the same compromises that Microsoft has in this regard.
Meanwhile, if you really want there are infact workarounds.
Hmmm. CD's do compete with iTunes. What iTunes does very well, and why I converted, was the ability to download one track and not an entire album.
If all I could do was download albums in iTunes...I'd buy the CD.
I believe the SuperDrive was included with Mac's before the Store allowed movie downloads. Perhaps they will remove it in the future to stop the competition.
That said; the SuperDrive does have it's place (I'd also favor a separate external drive though - including blu-ray). Let's say you go and buy FCP. How you going to install it? Download? No chance! Way to big.
No, they don't compete. I would even go as far as saying they're completely different products. When I'm really interested in a particular album, I will always buy it on CD - the quality is unrivalled by Apple's digital files, I'm getting a nice booklet, and the physical medium will last me longer than the digital copy. I only buy from the ITS when I need the convenience and don't really care about the quality (e.g. when I'm interested in one particular song).
It would be the same for movies (if Apple even offered them where I live). I'd be content with the iTunes-quality when I'm really just interested in a movie to pass the time, but any film I really care about I'd still get on BR (unless of course the ITS suddenly offers digital copies in 1080p).
And software, OS X and FCP included, could be distributed on SD-cards. But hey, you're preaching to the choir, I still WANT an optical drive - but it should be able to read BR. The Superdrive is simply obsolete, I don't care about DVDs. They're dead, last-gen.
The whole point is to simplify, not to make things more complex. I'd like everything on one device. I'd like to get my Blu-Ray disks into my computer, just as I've got music, Tv shows and, so far, some DVDs. I've got too many electronic devices in my system already.
What's simpler than a hard drive? Optical media was always inherently more complex than random access disks. The same goes for tapes. If you can just drag files over and not worry about some sort of hidden mastering process, then the whole thing is much better. It will be more robust because it is simpler. It will also be easier.
A bus powered USB drive is like a gigantic floppy drive and about the same size too.
You can use on any machine with a USB port. ALL of your Macs will be able to use it. The same goes for PCs. Whereas PC BD-ROM drives are still rather unusual.
Then there's always the fun potential of disks not getting along with individual drives. There's bound to be some of that nonsense with bluray.
Due to legacy reasons, some TVs don't show the entire screen image. Part of the screen image is off beyond the visible borders of the screen. Some fine tuning with the driver/desktop settings perhaps?
10% overscan is typical. Results vary depending on TV + video chipset.
I think most TVs overscan by default. It's really annoying that it still happens, and even more annoying that some movies try to compensate for it, having a window boxing effect, a black border on ALL edges.
A lot of times, overscan goes away if you use the TV's DVI port, if it has one. If it's connected through a TV's HDMI port, the TV usually assumes it's movie content and overscans. Otherwise, you probably can work around it on the computer side, but it's less than ideal, because you're blanking out active signal area.
I think most TVs overscan by default. It's really annoying that it still happens, and even more annoying that some movies try to compensate for it, having a window boxing effect, a black border on ALL edges.
A lot of times, overscan goes away if you use the TV's DVI port, if it has one. If it's connected through a TV's HDMI port, the TV usually assumes it's movie content and overscans. Otherwise, you probably can work around it on the computer side, but it's less than ideal, because you're blanking out active signal area.
The PC options just modify the front porch and back porch. You end up with a slightly 'smaller' desktop, but no image area is lost (for instance my HTPC has a resolution of 1824 x 1006). You just have a lower resolution. I use SwitchResX to create a custom monitor profile. I've had 4 HDTV's and only 1 gives the option to enable or disable overscan. I don't think that option is as common as you might think.
In any case, its easily worked around, and the software is free.
Tried the other day to connect my MBP to a receiver thru a DVI-to-HDMI-cable. Works, but at least my ONKYO receiver and SHARP LCD-TV gave a couple of unwanted results. The Mac does a great discovery and notes that theres is a TV behind the cable. However, when trying to fit the picture to the screen it offers only two things:
? a smaller but sharp picture including the whole desktop but a large black area around it
? a picture filling the TV-screen which actually is to large leaving the outer limits of the desktop outside viewable area.
Can of course be something else, but just a DVI-to-HDMI adapter needs more than just pins.
I love this! Either they upgrade AppleTV with some more juice or the skip it and do something creative based on MacMini with HDMI output!!!
I think you will find that it works fine if you connect directly to your Sharp TV and bypass the Onkyo receiver entirely.
I have a theory on the matter, might sound crazy but still..
Maybe Apple holds off on the audio because of licensing issues concerning HDMI. I don't know how the licensing models look, but if they were to enable audio they would almost certainly have to sell an adapter for mDP to HDMI since that would be the sole purpose of the audio.
And maybe that would require HDMI licensing. A bag of hurt someone called it. Or was that Blue-Ray.?
As someone who just recently had to make a backup of my iTunes library on a boatload of D/L DVD+R discs, I would welcome BD+R or any other method. I realize this is slightly off-topic to the HDMI issue, but Apple should either add a feature to iTunes to dump a full backup of a library to an external HDD or provide an optical drive that is capable of accommodating a larger capacity recordable media.
The backup was needed to port the library to a new Mac Mini.
You could have used Time Machine with an external drive...
The PC options just modify the front porch and back porch. You end up with a slightly 'smaller' desktop, but no image area is lost (for instance my HTPC has a resolution of 1824 x 1006). You just have a lower resolution.
Is it pixel perfect, meaning not scaled?
I think we're using different terms to mean the same idea. I'm pretty sure your computer is still sending out the same full 1920x1080 raster, the difference between that and your 1825x1006 is lost to empty data, ergo, you've just lost 240k pixels of image area.
I love how folks just keep on with this "Apple was going to put blu-ray in their machines but changed their minds' schtick. Sorry but I don't see it. When Apple added 720p videos to the itunes store it was pretty clear they were trying to push past optical disks.
And the consumers have also made it pretty clear digital movies in their current proprietary and heavily DRM laden form isn't something their interested in. Nobody wants a movie that's lower quality and can only play on devices from one company. While Blu-Ray may or may not catch on, optical disks are not dead by a long shot and digital movies aren't going to catch on until companies, Apple included, get a lot less greedy.
Comments
I also find it ironic that Steve Jobs in on the Blu-ray board!
More like smart. Because he's getting the facts first hand. When he says that there's issues, that the licensing is too expensive and complex, he knows. Not 'he heard'
What is Apple doing as a member of the Blu-ray board? Smart would be for Steve Jobs to use Apple's position and influence to improve these issues rather than just sitting there and bitching about it, all the while trying to undermine Blu-ray. How would Apple like its own board members publicly making negative comments about Apple?
What is Apple doing as a member of the Blu-ray board? Smart would be for Steve Jobs to use Apple's position and influence to improve these issues rather than just sitting there and bitching about it, all the while trying to undermine Blu-ray. How would Apple like its own board members publicly making negative comments about Apple?
Sadly, there are no issues left to resolve. They have all been done; the licensing issue (originally referred to by SJ as a "bag of hurt"), were simplified. Technical challenges..whilst I am not in the know...every other manufacturer has found a solution - without increasing the price.
I think it is simple: Blu-ray competes with the Apple online store and they would not be able to charge more to absorb the licensing. That's it.
Oh - SJ got his seat as part of the Disney/Pixar Studios acquisition. Amazing that a company like Disney would allow him to do this! Having kids, Blu-ray movies are big in our house...especially Disney ones.
Sadly, there are no issues left to resolve. They have all been done; the licensing issue (originally referred to by SJ as a "bag of hurt"), were simplified. Technical challenges..whilst I am not in the know...every other manufacturer has found a solution - without increasing the price.
I think it is simple: Blu-ray competes with the Apple online store and they would not be able to charge more to absorb the licensing. That's it.
That seems to be pretty much it. Jobs wants downloads to prevail. It's their new business model, and they're going to follow that road no matter what. I just hope that at some point he won't have a choice, and will do it.
there have been blu-ray software players since the windows XP days. all you needed was a graphics card with HDCP compliant drivers. nvidia and ATI both made their drivers for all their cards hdcp compliant years ago
Sadly, there are no issues left to resolve. They have all been done; the licensing issue (originally referred to by SJ as a "bag of hurt"), were simplified. Technical challenges..whilst I am not in the know...every other manufacturer has found a solution - without increasing the price.
I think it is simple: Blu-ray competes with the Apple online store and they would not be able to charge more to absorb the licensing. That's it.
Oh - SJ got his seat as part of the Disney/Pixar Studios acquisition. Amazing that a company like Disney would allow him to do this! Having kids, Blu-ray movies are big in our house...especially Disney ones.
I have disputed this argument countless times... Here we go again: BR does NOT compete with the ITS. Just like CDs and DVDs don't compete with the ITS (following your logic, Apple would have to leave the Superdrive out of their computers entirely - not just because it's obsolete, though it is, but because it competes with the ITS). The ITS is all about convenience, not quality - you'll get a digital download, which is convenient because you don't have to leave your house to get a new movie, but its quality will be pretty terrible compared to BR (720p with compression artefacts). BR, on the other hand, is all about quality. The customer who downloads a movie in the ITS is not the same kind of customer who's interested in buying a BR and watching it on a great FullHD-screen. Just saying.
You anti-BR people should also consider the facts that digital distribution only exists in a very rudimentary form (no 1080p!) in ONE SINGLE COUNTRY so far. Only one subset of Apple-users, namely Americans, can buy movies from Apple at this point in time. This just proves that digital distribution still has a veeery long way to go. I agree that it's the future, but that future is at least five years away, and until it arrives (worldwide availability of ITS-movies in 1080p or better), Blu-Ray is king.
And please don't act like Apple are trailblazers eschewing a stillborn technology. If they were truly serious about the death of optical media yadda yadda yadda they should just go ahead and put their money where their mouth is, which means getting rid of the obsolete Superdrive and preparing the user for a future without optical drives in computers. As much as I want BR, I'd really respect that move and it would open up a lot of new and exciting possibilities. However, they're still putting that obsolete piece of junk into every Mac except the MBA, which indicates to me that they're not very serious about all this. They're just lazy, or they don't care.
what are these expensive licensing issues? you can get blu-ray as an option on every cheapo dell and HP computer. It's $100 or so for the drive and the player software is included.
there have been blu-ray software players since the windows XP days. all you needed was a graphics card with HDCP compliant drivers. nvidia and ATI both made their drivers for all their cards hdcp compliant years ago
I think most of that is just smoke and mirrors. The additional cost (or even the option for it) would be pretty minimal I would think. They could easily make the BD optional so the end user decides to upgrade and pays the additional costs. The hardware is standard SATA/ATAPI. They woudl have to build the capability into OS X which may not be as trivial, but you would think they already have something on a shelf somewhere to do this.
I think melgross has it right. It would cut into Apple's iTunes movie profit. The drives themselves are not substantially different than typical optical drives, other than the laser being used, and all of that is 'black-box' for the OS. It just has to detect an ATAPI SATA drive there, be that DVD-RW, or BD-RW.
I have disputed this argument countless times... Here we go again: BR does NOT compete with the ITS. Just like CDs and DVDs don't compete with the ITS (following your logic, Apple would have to leave the Superdrive out of their computers entirely - not just because it's obsolete, though it is, but because it competes with the ITS). The ITS is all about convenience, not quality - you'll get a digital download, which is convenient because you don't have to leave your house to get a new movie, but its quality will be pretty terrible compared to BR (720p with compression artefacts). BR, on the other hand, is all about quality. The customer who downloads a movie in the ITS is not the same kind of customer who's interested in buying a BR and watching it on a great FullHD-screen. Just saying.
You anti-BR people should also consider the facts that digital distribution only exists in a very rudimentary form (no 1080p!) in ONE SINGLE COUNTRY so far. Only one subset of Apple-users, namely Americans, can buy movies from Apple at this point in time. This just proves that digital distribution still has a veeery long way to go. I agree that it's the future, but that future is at least five years away, and until it arrives (worldwide availability of ITS-movies in 1080p or better), Blu-Ray is king.
And please don't act like Apple are trailblazers eschewing a stillborn technology. If they were truly serious about the death of optical media yadda yadda yadda they should just go ahead and put their money where their mouth is, which means getting rid of the obsolete Superdrive and preparing the user for a future without optical drives in computers. As much as I want BR, I'd really respect that move and it would open up a lot of new and exciting possibilities. However, they're still putting that obsolete piece of junk into every Mac except the MBA, which indicates to me that they're not very serious about all this. They're just lazy, or they don't care.
Hmmm. CD's do compete with iTunes. What iTunes does very well, and why I converted, was the ability to download one track and not an entire album.
If all I could do was download albums in iTunes...I'd buy the CD.
I believe the SuperDrive was included with Mac's before the Store allowed movie downloads. Perhaps they will remove it in the future to stop the competition.
That said; the SuperDrive does have it's place (I'd also favor a separate external drive though - including blu-ray). Let's say you go and buy FCP. How you going to install it? Download? No chance! Way to big.
what are these expensive licensing issues? you can get blu-ray as an option on every cheapo dell and HP computer. It's $100 or so for the drive and the player software is included.
there have been blu-ray software players since the windows XP days. all you needed was a graphics card with HDCP compliant drivers. nvidia and ATI both made their drivers for all their cards hdcp compliant years ago
You're quoting the price of a 1/2 height (~1.75" thick) desktop BD reader, most of Apple's computers don't have space for them inside. I can't find a 9.5mm *slot loading* drive that would work in an Apple notebook.
Apple hardware supports HDCP, you can install Windows on a Mac Pro and play BD content just fine. I wonder if Apple doesn't offer a way for third party software makers to use HDCP in OS X.
I had this exact problem. If you scroll to the top of the list of resolutions in Display preferences (with your TV plugged in), you'll see the proper HDTV resolutions, 720i, 1080i, 1080p, etc. They even have a little TV icon next to them, shame they're hidden. Make sure your TV doesn't have some kind of screen zooming on too.
It sounds like you are suffering from overscan.
Due to legacy reasons, some TVs don't show the entire screen image. Part of the screen image is off beyond the visible borders of the screen. Some fine tuning with the driver/desktop settings perhaps?
10% overscan is typical. Results vary depending on TV + video chipset.
BluRay, like Flash, is just a placeholder, while better things develop.
To not understand this, is to be left behind. I don't care that average AV heads don't get it, I'm just glad Apple does.
Being able to see more than 3 years into the future is why Apple is where they are, with what they have.
That doesn't alter the fact that you are depriving yourself while you wait. The problems that arise with BluRay don't disappear just because the physical media does. Apple will probably have to make the same compromises that Microsoft has in this regard.
Meanwhile, if you really want there are infact workarounds.
Hmmm. CD's do compete with iTunes. What iTunes does very well, and why I converted, was the ability to download one track and not an entire album.
If all I could do was download albums in iTunes...I'd buy the CD.
I believe the SuperDrive was included with Mac's before the Store allowed movie downloads. Perhaps they will remove it in the future to stop the competition.
That said; the SuperDrive does have it's place (I'd also favor a separate external drive though - including blu-ray). Let's say you go and buy FCP. How you going to install it? Download? No chance! Way to big.
No, they don't compete. I would even go as far as saying they're completely different products. When I'm really interested in a particular album, I will always buy it on CD - the quality is unrivalled by Apple's digital files, I'm getting a nice booklet, and the physical medium will last me longer than the digital copy. I only buy from the ITS when I need the convenience and don't really care about the quality (e.g. when I'm interested in one particular song).
It would be the same for movies (if Apple even offered them where I live). I'd be content with the iTunes-quality when I'm really just interested in a movie to pass the time, but any film I really care about I'd still get on BR (unless of course the ITS suddenly offers digital copies in 1080p).
And software, OS X and FCP included, could be distributed on SD-cards. But hey, you're preaching to the choir, I still WANT an optical drive - but it should be able to read BR. The Superdrive is simply obsolete, I don't care about DVDs. They're dead, last-gen.
The whole point is to simplify, not to make things more complex. I'd like everything on one device. I'd like to get my Blu-Ray disks into my computer, just as I've got music, Tv shows and, so far, some DVDs. I've got too many electronic devices in my system already.
What's simpler than a hard drive? Optical media was always inherently more complex than random access disks. The same goes for tapes. If you can just drag files over and not worry about some sort of hidden mastering process, then the whole thing is much better. It will be more robust because it is simpler. It will also be easier.
A bus powered USB drive is like a gigantic floppy drive and about the same size too.
You can use on any machine with a USB port. ALL of your Macs will be able to use it. The same goes for PCs. Whereas PC BD-ROM drives are still rather unusual.
Then there's always the fun potential of disks not getting along with individual drives. There's bound to be some of that nonsense with bluray.
It sounds like you are suffering from overscan.
Due to legacy reasons, some TVs don't show the entire screen image. Part of the screen image is off beyond the visible borders of the screen. Some fine tuning with the driver/desktop settings perhaps?
10% overscan is typical. Results vary depending on TV + video chipset.
I think most TVs overscan by default. It's really annoying that it still happens, and even more annoying that some movies try to compensate for it, having a window boxing effect, a black border on ALL edges.
A lot of times, overscan goes away if you use the TV's DVI port, if it has one. If it's connected through a TV's HDMI port, the TV usually assumes it's movie content and overscans. Otherwise, you probably can work around it on the computer side, but it's less than ideal, because you're blanking out active signal area.
I think most TVs overscan by default. It's really annoying that it still happens, and even more annoying that some movies try to compensate for it, having a window boxing effect, a black border on ALL edges.
A lot of times, overscan goes away if you use the TV's DVI port, if it has one. If it's connected through a TV's HDMI port, the TV usually assumes it's movie content and overscans. Otherwise, you probably can work around it on the computer side, but it's less than ideal, because you're blanking out active signal area.
The PC options just modify the front porch and back porch. You end up with a slightly 'smaller' desktop, but no image area is lost (for instance my HTPC has a resolution of 1824 x 1006). You just have a lower resolution. I use SwitchResX to create a custom monitor profile. I've had 4 HDTV's and only 1 gives the option to enable or disable overscan. I don't think that option is as common as you might think.
In any case, its easily worked around, and the software is free.
Tried the other day to connect my MBP to a receiver thru a DVI-to-HDMI-cable. Works, but at least my ONKYO receiver and SHARP LCD-TV gave a couple of unwanted results. The Mac does a great discovery and notes that theres is a TV behind the cable. However, when trying to fit the picture to the screen it offers only two things:
? a smaller but sharp picture including the whole desktop but a large black area around it
? a picture filling the TV-screen which actually is to large leaving the outer limits of the desktop outside viewable area.
Can of course be something else, but just a DVI-to-HDMI adapter needs more than just pins.
I love this! Either they upgrade AppleTV with some more juice or the skip it and do something creative based on MacMini with HDMI output!!!
I think you will find that it works fine if you connect directly to your Sharp TV and bypass the Onkyo receiver entirely.
Regards,
Curtis
I have a theory on the matter, might sound crazy but still..
Maybe Apple holds off on the audio because of licensing issues concerning HDMI. I don't know how the licensing models look, but if they were to enable audio they would almost certainly have to sell an adapter for mDP to HDMI since that would be the sole purpose of the audio.
And maybe that would require HDMI licensing. A bag of hurt someone called it. Or was that Blue-Ray.?
Well. Who Knows.. except Steve.
As someone who just recently had to make a backup of my iTunes library on a boatload of D/L DVD+R discs, I would welcome BD+R or any other method. I realize this is slightly off-topic to the HDMI issue, but Apple should either add a feature to iTunes to dump a full backup of a library to an external HDD or provide an optical drive that is capable of accommodating a larger capacity recordable media.
The backup was needed to port the library to a new Mac Mini.
You could have used Time Machine with an external drive...
You could have used Time Machine with an external drive...
Or the Finder.
The PC options just modify the front porch and back porch. You end up with a slightly 'smaller' desktop, but no image area is lost (for instance my HTPC has a resolution of 1824 x 1006). You just have a lower resolution.
Is it pixel perfect, meaning not scaled?
I think we're using different terms to mean the same idea. I'm pretty sure your computer is still sending out the same full 1920x1080 raster, the difference between that and your 1825x1006 is lost to empty data, ergo, you've just lost 240k pixels of image area.
I love how folks just keep on with this "Apple was going to put blu-ray in their machines but changed their minds' schtick. Sorry but I don't see it. When Apple added 720p videos to the itunes store it was pretty clear they were trying to push past optical disks.
And the consumers have also made it pretty clear digital movies in their current proprietary and heavily DRM laden form isn't something their interested in. Nobody wants a movie that's lower quality and can only play on devices from one company. While Blu-Ray may or may not catch on, optical disks are not dead by a long shot and digital movies aren't going to catch on until companies, Apple included, get a lot less greedy.