And yet Netflix streaming is growing, Hulu is incredibly popular, I hear YouTube has a lot of veiwers and paid for digital rentals and purchases appear to be gaining in popularity. No one is saying that Blu-ray media on a large HDTV isn't great, but don't discount an experience that is "good enough" and convenient.
I watch most of my TV shows on Hulu in 480p. The ones that don't air I watch as torrented AVIs in SD. I could go for the HD versions but th extra wait for the DL is inconvnient and the SD is "good enough". I sinply choose not to wait a year for the entire season to be put on Blu-ray before I watch it. That may work for you, and that is fine, you have your option, but moat people are more likely in my camp, looking for a simple convenient solution. L
Funny how you like all this visual crap that sells by the tonnage yet keep deriding netbook sales.
What exactly is so innovative about adding a Blu-ray drive? In the end I welcome a move towards Quad Core processing for the iMac lineup over Blu-ray which is a nice to have but not a must.
The Mac Pro should be the first Mac with Blu-ray IMO and it should be a recorder.
I'm all for that but Apple appears to be slow-walking this one. What for? I'd love to be able to watch 1080p movies on my 30" Cinema Display, but am stuck with DVD upscaling instead. I'm unimpressed with Apple's failure to properly support a technology that makes things look better.
How so?? And, I don't see why the word "iTunes" even need be included in that sentence.
As several posters have pointed out in this thread, the digital media experience is all related from Apple's point of view. They have to balance the trade-offs of offering blu-ray hardware and OS support with the impact it willl have on their iTunes digital media store and advances in streaming technology. It's all tied into the media experience, something Apple cares a great deal about. As I said, I think the copyright stuff can be over come, it may be as simple as finding slot loading drives in the right height and price for Apple to make the upgrade to Blu-Ray.
Blu-ray isn't a media format as much as it's a lockbox of DRM technologies. I'm not really enthused by any attempt to slow down technology because of DRM.
Kinda like the movies you buy from iTunes and can only watch on an AppleTV or computer. Don't get me wrong as I like Apple products as much as the next guy, but Apple is really no different than Blu-ray when it comes to video content. Just look at the movie "Drag Me To Hell". You can own a SD copy from iTunes for just $14.99 or buy it on Blu-ray from Amazon for $23.99 and both are DRM-ed. You might say $23.99 is a lot, but IMO, $14.99 is a lot as well considering all your getting is 1.37GB of data and some "iTunes extras". For $9 more, you can have it the best way possible on a consumer format.
I totally agree. Why people think these HDDs are better is ridiculous. Weren't optical discs made to last hundreds of years?
Those of you that may think that optical media is superior to magnetic media, may be correct in a perfect theoretical world, but all media is susceptible to failure. I have many many old archive quality DVD's and CD's that are no longer readable on any drive. The were burned properly, stored properly and still failed and no, they weren't burned on "cheap" media, they were burned onto high end TDK, Taiyo Yuden, Kodak archive quality media.
Media Fails, often without warning, and if you put stuff into a vault for 3 years, and pull it out, the stats are starting to show that 50% of the time, the media will be unreadable.
Currently I back up to 3 independent drives and good archival media, but none of these precautions will ensure my data's integrity 100% of the time.
To think that Blu-Ray discs are better than any preceding media is fool hardy.
Everyone suggesting that Apple shouldn't include Blu-ray as an option should look in the mirror and ask themselves what they would be saying if Apple announced Macs with Blu-ray today. Some peoples opinions wouldn't change, but I imagine many would. My rule of thumb for forum posting (and will admit that I occasionally forget to follow it) is essentially this simple question: would my argument be the same if the shoe was on the other foot? If it isn't, maybe I need to re-think what my argument actually is.
I watch most of my TV shows on Hulu in 480p. The ones that don't air I watch as torrented AVIs in SD. I could go for the HD versions but th extra wait for the DL is inconvnient and the SD is "good enough".
And this is precisely why I'm saying the "in 2-years" quote from the Netflix CEO is a little premature. It just takes too damned long to stream or download anything of better-than "good enough" quality. When you watch an episode of House or C.S.I. or any other show for that matter in HD, it's just not good enough (for me) to have to watch it in anything less.
As several posters have pointed out in this thread, the digital media experience is all related from Apple's point of view. They have to balance the trade-offs of offering blu-ray hardware and OS support with the impact it willl have on their iTunes digital media store and advances in streaming technology. It's all tied into the media experience, something Apple cares a great deal about. As I said, I think the copyright stuff can be over come, it may be as simple as finding slot loading drives in the right height and price for Apple to make the upgrade to Blu-Ray.
If Apple really cared about the "media experience" why is it that they don't offer a single movie in 1080p? We're stuck with the lesser size. Until they figure out how to transmit full quality 1080p via the iTunes store, the physical disc is the best way to transport the movie. The new iFrame format doesn't offer any hope as it's going to need to be upscaled as well. If Apple is going to oppose Blu-Ray entirely (as they currently have been), they had better offer something that competes. Their 720p HD movies aren't competing. That's offering a lesser product than offered on Blu-Ray. Give us the option to put the drives in our Macs, support it in software, and let us decide whether we want to buy the discs or buy the lesser quality iTunes store versions, or sell 1080p versions of movies on iTunes and be done with it.
Funny how you like all this visual crap that sells by the tonnage yet keep deriding netbook sales.
Is that supposed to make sense to anyone outside your asylum? Do I like visual crap? Sure do. I like TV shows and movies and other visual media. I watch it everyday. Do I like netbooks? Nope! I've owned 2, put Mac OS X on one. Neither could play Hulu's 480p video without stuttering due to the demands of Adobe Flash. Netbooks are stand in PCs for people with adult sized hands and an interest in a decent computing experiece. The same way that the iPhone won't replace the full sized computing experience, but at least it isn't trying to and can fit in your pocket.
Is that supposed to make sense to anyone outside your asylum? Do I like visual crap? Sure do. I like TV shows and movies and other visual media. I watch it everyday. Do I like netbooks? Nope! I've owned 2, put Mac OS X on one. Neither could play Hulu's 480p video without stuttering due to the demands of Adobe Flash. Netbooks are stand in PCs for people with adult sized hands and an interest in a decent computing experiece. The same way that the iPhone won't replace the full sized computing experience, but at least it isn't trying to and can fit in your pocket.
By visual crap I meant quality not content. Must I spoon feed you everything?
To think that Blu-Ray discs are better than any preceding media is fool hardy.
We never said Blu-ray would be more reliable than any preceding media, just that it would be a heck-of-a-lot more convenient than previous optical media for archival purposes. I have no intention of replacing a conventional HDD for my Time Machine backups, but rather that an optical backup serves as a nice supplemental backup precisely because nothing is 100% reliable.
It's not just Apple. They have DRM as well and rightly so with the cost of movies today. What the industry (MPAA etc) hardware vendors (Sony, Apple etc) don't seem to be able to do is offer a media solution with adequate yet not draconian DRM that addresses what consumers "really" want.
1080 high quality video and audio
The ability to move the content around to different playback devices
No lock in.
I've seen no Universal DRM structure right now which means you're basically buying into the DRM platform of choice when you choose media playback.
And this is precisely why I'm saying the "in 2-years" quote from the Netflix CEO is a little premature. It just takes too damned long to stream or download anything of better-than "good enough" quality. When you watch an episode of House or C.S.I. or any other show for that matter in HD, it's just not good enough (for me) to have to watch it in anything less.
Looking at te ratings for these TV shows and knowing that 720p from MPEG-2 from cable or sat and Hulu and other network streaming sites are much higher than than Blu-Ray sales (even DVD sales?) for a particular series it shows that most people find these free and and sooner alternatives "good enough", otherwise eeryine would bypass their cable/sat and simply wait for the season to hit Blu-ray. The ratings indicate that the majority aren't doing that.
I wouldn't be the one to tell you. I only switched to mac during the Intel transition.
I wouldn't expect you to. I wouldn't expect you not to either for that matter. Your post just made me think back to the first iMac and got me curious about the whole line. I never paid attention to mobile vs. desktop processor until the intel transition either. I just knew my bondi iMac had the same processor daughtercard as my Wallstreet PowerBook.
It's not just Apple. They have DRM as well and rightly so with the cost of movies today. What the industry (MPAA etc) hardware vendors (Sony, Apple etc) don't seem to be able to do is offer a media solution with adequate yet not draconian DRM that addresses what consumers "really" want.
1080 high quality video and audio
The ability to move the content around to different playback devices
No lock in.
I don't see how Blu-ray doesn't offer this. You have the 1st part in spades. As for the 2nd point, this is more a question of the formats in question as opposed to a DRM issue. To expect the CE industry to come up with one universal standard that plays on all devices is unrealistic. The best we could hope for in terms of "universal support" would be what we had with DVD when it was first introduced. Never before in CE history had there be such unilateral support for a new format. Once the HD format war ended and HD-DVD went away, Blu-ray pretty much had about as much "universal support" as it was going to get. The problem is that every CE company wants to make money and for many of them, that means peddling their own proprietary formats. You can't stream Netflix content with a Vudu box or watch X-box Live content on a PS-3 or vice-versa. You're gonna have different competing formats no matter what. As for being locked in, I personally don't feel that I am as nothing else offers what Blu-ray delivers for me right now.
Looking at te ratings for these TV shows and knowing that 720p from MPEG-2 from cable or sat and Hulu and other network streaming sites are much higher than than Blu-Ray sales (even DVD sales?) for a particular series it shows that most people find these free and and sooner alternatives "good enough", otherwise eeryine would bypass their cable/sat and simply wait for the season to hit Blu-ray. The ratings indicate that the majority aren't doing that.
At the risk of sounding argumentative, how do you even compare watching TV shows on cable or satellite (or Hulu) to sales of those same TV shows on Blu-ray or DVD. The reason people watch Hulu is precisely because it's free. By that very definition, those people were never in the market for buying those shows on disc. Also, this doesn't account for the quality of the show in question. The notion that people go for the free and sooner alternatives as opposed to waiting for the eventual Blu-ray/DVD release has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with the desire of the fans of those shows wanting to watch each new episode as it is aired. Heck, even I'll admit that I have no desire to buy a TV show on disc if I saw it for free (or as part of my normal satellite subscription).
Comments
And yet Netflix streaming is growing, Hulu is incredibly popular, I hear YouTube has a lot of veiwers and paid for digital rentals and purchases appear to be gaining in popularity. No one is saying that Blu-ray media on a large HDTV isn't great, but don't discount an experience that is "good enough" and convenient.
I watch most of my TV shows on Hulu in 480p. The ones that don't air I watch as torrented AVIs in SD. I could go for the HD versions but th extra wait for the DL is inconvnient and the SD is "good enough". I sinply choose not to wait a year for the entire season to be put on Blu-ray before I watch it. That may work for you, and that is fine, you have your option, but moat people are more likely in my camp, looking for a simple convenient solution. L
Funny how you like all this visual crap that sells by the tonnage yet keep deriding netbook sales.
What exactly is so innovative about adding a Blu-ray drive? In the end I welcome a move towards Quad Core processing for the iMac lineup over Blu-ray which is a nice to have but not a must.
The Mac Pro should be the first Mac with Blu-ray IMO and it should be a recorder.
I'm all for that but Apple appears to be slow-walking this one. What for? I'd love to be able to watch 1080p movies on my 30" Cinema Display, but am stuck with DVD upscaling instead. I'm unimpressed with Apple's failure to properly support a technology that makes things look better.
How so?? And, I don't see why the word "iTunes" even need be included in that sentence.
As several posters have pointed out in this thread, the digital media experience is all related from Apple's point of view. They have to balance the trade-offs of offering blu-ray hardware and OS support with the impact it willl have on their iTunes digital media store and advances in streaming technology. It's all tied into the media experience, something Apple cares a great deal about. As I said, I think the copyright stuff can be over come, it may be as simple as finding slot loading drives in the right height and price for Apple to make the upgrade to Blu-Ray.
Blu-ray isn't a media format as much as it's a lockbox of DRM technologies. I'm not really enthused by any attempt to slow down technology because of DRM.
Kinda like the movies you buy from iTunes and can only watch on an AppleTV or computer. Don't get me wrong as I like Apple products as much as the next guy, but Apple is really no different than Blu-ray when it comes to video content. Just look at the movie "Drag Me To Hell". You can own a SD copy from iTunes for just $14.99 or buy it on Blu-ray from Amazon for $23.99 and both are DRM-ed. You might say $23.99 is a lot, but IMO, $14.99 is a lot as well considering all your getting is 1.37GB of data and some "iTunes extras". For $9 more, you can have it the best way possible on a consumer format.
I totally agree. Why people think these HDDs are better is ridiculous. Weren't optical discs made to last hundreds of years?
Those of you that may think that optical media is superior to magnetic media, may be correct in a perfect theoretical world, but all media is susceptible to failure. I have many many old archive quality DVD's and CD's that are no longer readable on any drive. The were burned properly, stored properly and still failed and no, they weren't burned on "cheap" media, they were burned onto high end TDK, Taiyo Yuden, Kodak archive quality media.
Media Fails, often without warning, and if you put stuff into a vault for 3 years, and pull it out, the stats are starting to show that 50% of the time, the media will be unreadable.
Currently I back up to 3 independent drives and good archival media, but none of these precautions will ensure my data's integrity 100% of the time.
To think that Blu-Ray discs are better than any preceding media is fool hardy.
I watch most of my TV shows on Hulu in 480p. The ones that don't air I watch as torrented AVIs in SD. I could go for the HD versions but th extra wait for the DL is inconvnient and the SD is "good enough".
And this is precisely why I'm saying the "in 2-years" quote from the Netflix CEO is a little premature. It just takes too damned long to stream or download anything of better-than "good enough" quality. When you watch an episode of House or C.S.I. or any other show for that matter in HD, it's just not good enough (for me) to have to watch it in anything less.
As several posters have pointed out in this thread, the digital media experience is all related from Apple's point of view. They have to balance the trade-offs of offering blu-ray hardware and OS support with the impact it willl have on their iTunes digital media store and advances in streaming technology. It's all tied into the media experience, something Apple cares a great deal about. As I said, I think the copyright stuff can be over come, it may be as simple as finding slot loading drives in the right height and price for Apple to make the upgrade to Blu-Ray.
If Apple really cared about the "media experience" why is it that they don't offer a single movie in 1080p? We're stuck with the lesser size. Until they figure out how to transmit full quality 1080p via the iTunes store, the physical disc is the best way to transport the movie. The new iFrame format doesn't offer any hope as it's going to need to be upscaled as well. If Apple is going to oppose Blu-Ray entirely (as they currently have been), they had better offer something that competes. Their 720p HD movies aren't competing. That's offering a lesser product than offered on Blu-Ray. Give us the option to put the drives in our Macs, support it in software, and let us decide whether we want to buy the discs or buy the lesser quality iTunes store versions, or sell 1080p versions of movies on iTunes and be done with it.
Funny how you like all this visual crap that sells by the tonnage yet keep deriding netbook sales.
Is that supposed to make sense to anyone outside your asylum? Do I like visual crap? Sure do. I like TV shows and movies and other visual media. I watch it everyday. Do I like netbooks? Nope! I've owned 2, put Mac OS X on one. Neither could play Hulu's 480p video without stuttering due to the demands of Adobe Flash. Netbooks are stand in PCs for people with adult sized hands and an interest in a decent computing experiece. The same way that the iPhone won't replace the full sized computing experience, but at least it isn't trying to and can fit in your pocket.
Is that supposed to make sense to anyone outside your asylum? Do I like visual crap? Sure do. I like TV shows and movies and other visual media. I watch it everyday. Do I like netbooks? Nope! I've owned 2, put Mac OS X on one. Neither could play Hulu's 480p video without stuttering due to the demands of Adobe Flash. Netbooks are stand in PCs for people with adult sized hands and an interest in a decent computing experiece. The same way that the iPhone won't replace the full sized computing experience, but at least it isn't trying to and can fit in your pocket.
By visual crap I meant quality not content. Must I spoon feed you everything?
To think that Blu-Ray discs are better than any preceding media is fool hardy.
We never said Blu-ray would be more reliable than any preceding media, just that it would be a heck-of-a-lot more convenient than previous optical media for archival purposes. I have no intention of replacing a conventional HDD for my Time Machine backups, but rather that an optical backup serves as a nice supplemental backup precisely because nothing is 100% reliable.
1080 high quality video and audio
The ability to move the content around to different playback devices
No lock in.
I've seen no Universal DRM structure right now which means you're basically buying into the DRM platform of choice when you choose media playback.
Yes heat (and power consumption). The iMacs have been using mobile processors ever since they went to this form factor.
The first iMac also used a mobile processor. Other than the G5 iMac have they ever used desktop processors?
And this is precisely why I'm saying the "in 2-years" quote from the Netflix CEO is a little premature. It just takes too damned long to stream or download anything of better-than "good enough" quality. When you watch an episode of House or C.S.I. or any other show for that matter in HD, it's just not good enough (for me) to have to watch it in anything less.
Looking at te ratings for these TV shows and knowing that 720p from MPEG-2 from cable or sat and Hulu and other network streaming sites are much higher than than Blu-Ray sales (even DVD sales?) for a particular series it shows that most people find these free and and sooner alternatives "good enough", otherwise eeryine would bypass their cable/sat and simply wait for the season to hit Blu-ray. The ratings indicate that the majority aren't doing that.
The first iMac also used a mobile processor. Other than the G5 iMac have they ever used desktop processors?
I wouldn't be the one to tell you. I only switched to mac during the Intel transition.
I wouldn't be the one to tell you. I only switched to mac during the Intel transition.
I wouldn't expect you to. I wouldn't expect you not to either for that matter. Your post just made me think back to the first iMac and got me curious about the whole line. I never paid attention to mobile vs. desktop processor until the intel transition either. I just knew my bondi iMac had the same processor daughtercard as my Wallstreet PowerBook.
Well, if Blu-ray isn't coming then at least put in SD like the MacBook Pros.
and don't forget to add the matte screens like the 15 and 17" MacBook Pros.
It's not just Apple. They have DRM as well and rightly so with the cost of movies today. What the industry (MPAA etc) hardware vendors (Sony, Apple etc) don't seem to be able to do is offer a media solution with adequate yet not draconian DRM that addresses what consumers "really" want.
1080 high quality video and audio
The ability to move the content around to different playback devices
No lock in.
I don't see how Blu-ray doesn't offer this. You have the 1st part in spades. As for the 2nd point, this is more a question of the formats in question as opposed to a DRM issue. To expect the CE industry to come up with one universal standard that plays on all devices is unrealistic. The best we could hope for in terms of "universal support" would be what we had with DVD when it was first introduced. Never before in CE history had there be such unilateral support for a new format. Once the HD format war ended and HD-DVD went away, Blu-ray pretty much had about as much "universal support" as it was going to get. The problem is that every CE company wants to make money and for many of them, that means peddling their own proprietary formats. You can't stream Netflix content with a Vudu box or watch X-box Live content on a PS-3 or vice-versa. You're gonna have different competing formats no matter what. As for being locked in, I personally don't feel that I am as nothing else offers what Blu-ray delivers for me right now.
Looking at te ratings for these TV shows and knowing that 720p from MPEG-2 from cable or sat and Hulu and other network streaming sites are much higher than than Blu-Ray sales (even DVD sales?) for a particular series it shows that most people find these free and and sooner alternatives "good enough", otherwise eeryine would bypass their cable/sat and simply wait for the season to hit Blu-ray. The ratings indicate that the majority aren't doing that.
At the risk of sounding argumentative, how do you even compare watching TV shows on cable or satellite (or Hulu) to sales of those same TV shows on Blu-ray or DVD. The reason people watch Hulu is precisely because it's free. By that very definition, those people were never in the market for buying those shows on disc. Also, this doesn't account for the quality of the show in question. The notion that people go for the free and sooner alternatives as opposed to waiting for the eventual Blu-ray/DVD release has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with the desire of the fans of those shows wanting to watch each new episode as it is aired. Heck, even I'll admit that I have no desire to buy a TV show on disc if I saw it for free (or as part of my normal satellite subscription).