Apple and the imminent death of HD DVD

I suspect the soup to nuts DRM is more likely the reason than waiting out to see who wins the format war for the lack of new generation drives.

I could use a larger capacity optical disc for backups but I don't care what flavor it is.

I would like to see specialized authoring of Blu-ray content from FCS and ability to burn data discs etc.

But *please*, pretty please, don't give us Blu-ray movie playing. HDMI and the specific BD+ DRM is horrific, forcing a level of preemptive constant checking from the OS that has resulted in the mess that is Vista (and BD+ can modify the host system by executing native code, meaning you lose control of your system). Please read Peter Gutmann's slides:

http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf

To get an idea of what joy awaits if Apple decides to make blu-ray playing a part of OS X.

I think this whole thing has been more about Apple's trend over the past two years to produce products that sell well but do not necessarily include features that people actually want. The lack of an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray option on Apple products has been an unconscionable and deliberate middle finger to the professional video industry -- a market that Apple would not have ignored as few as five years ago. Apple were able to make a huge push forward with Final Cut & Final Cut Studio and get into a lot of places in the market they had not been able to enter before but it seems they have really dropped the ball recently. Final Cut Server is still nowhere to be seen. People are obviously still employed that do this development, so I'm hoping that we'll just see some big updates soon. It's a sad day when it's nearly impossible to complete any type of HD video project without a PC (or at least without running windows on a Mac)

I'm a believe in bandwidth. I dont want to buy "anything" physically. I would like to buy software. If you can stream High Def content to me, I'd much rather have it done that way. Then I know I can't loose it or damage it. Dont get me wrong, those fancy BlueRay DVD's rock. But in the end, I'd rather have all content given to me over the internet. There just needs to be a great interce. When I buy a movie over the internet....I dont want just the file. I want a "digital" DVD "holder" that shows me the cover and actors, etc....oh wait.....itunes does that. ^.^

I was a PC guy, move over, I'm going mac. I'm picking up 2 iphones this week and may get the airmac too.

Toshiba officially announced that it has abandoned the HD DVD format a few hours ago.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/?epi_menuItemID=8529ea2ad8631dcd3bb97904c6908a0c&epi_menuID=887566059a3aedb6efaaa9e27a808a0c&epi_baseMenuID=384979e8cc48c441ef0130f5c6908a0c&ndmViewId=news_view&newsLang=en&newsId=20080219005651

store down!

I don't see why they shouldn't. Apple isn't risking anything by adding a blu-ray option, just as the death of HD DVD won't affect the xbox despite them selling a drive for it

My 24" LCD isn't DRM-compliant, and I don't want DRM-crippled hardware. Blu-ray playback? I'll wait till the format's cracked and VLC plays it, thanks.

Firstly, I agree the quality is superior with BlueRay. But would my mother, or any consumers who buy Shrek 3 for their kids, be bothered with the difference?

We're living in a society where (some) people are downloading horrible quality camera-on-tripod-in-cinema copies of new movies, burn them, and pass them to relatives.

The iTunes movie rental store will appeal so a lot of that target audience from a sheer convenience point of view, so it's worth shelling out the $3 or so to avoid a lengthy download wait, get a bit better quality, and not have to leave the house and deal with traffic/crime to pickup a DVD from the local video store which has now closed and the owner opened up a Nandos store instead. Mmmm..... *drools*

Anyway:

Apple will probably introduce BlueRay, and this is good, but what if they put an easy way to add your own movie content to the iTunes store a la pod cast but with commission / cents trickling through to those who created it. Could be interesting, many hurdles though.

Someone commented above that Apple doesn't include drives till they drop below $50. That simply isn't true. They had a DVD burner when they were a brand new exciting expensive thing, for a $999 option as i recall, which was almost competitive at the time, but turned the G4 into a Movie studio in a box.

Firstly, I agree the quality is superior with BlueRay. But would my mother, or any consumers who buy Shrek 3 for their kids, be bothered with the difference?

We're living in a society where (some) people are downloading horrible quality camera-on-tripod-in-cinema copies of new movies, burn them, and pass them to relatives.

The iTunes movie rental store will appeal so a lot of that target audience from a sheer convenience point of view, so it's worth shelling out the $3 or so to avoid a lengthy download wait, get a bit better quality, and not have to leave the house and deal with traffic/crime to pickup a DVD from the local video store which has now closed and the owner opened up a Nandos store instead. Mmmm..... *drools*

Anyway:

Apple will probably introduce BlueRay, and this is good, but what if they put an easy way to add your own movie content to the iTunes store a la pod cast but with commission / cents trickling through to those who created it. Could be interesting, many hurdles though.

Someone commented above that Apple doesn't include drives till they drop below $50. That simply isn't true. They had a DVD burner when they were a brand new exciting expensive thing, for a $999 option as i recall, which was almost competitive at the time, but turned the G4 into a Movie studio in a box.