Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Multimedia, Apple, MacBook, Mac Pro
No Blu-ray on Macs... and no one cares
Danny Gorog at APC Magazine has written a really nice analysis of something that's rather strange when you think about it -- why aren't there any high definition DVD drives on Macs yet? It has been asked for by a few folks, but by and large, Apple has pretty much ignored the whole high definition debate. And even now, when we supposedly have a winner in Blu-ray, Apple hasn't pulled the trigger, and consumers, as Gorog notes, haven't even really cared much.In fact, across the entire PC market there's not a lot of wholehearted support for Blu-ray or any major high definition formats. It's not that DVDs are "good enough" -- HDTVs are selling by the truckloads -- it's more that consumers, apparently, just don't want to settle on another format. And that may be the key to this whole thing -- Apple has a vested interest in selling content, and implementing some other content producer's format into their machines will take away from their best HD content channel yet: iTunes.
And customers, happy to not have to buy yet another permanent format of their favorite movies, may be satisfied with having no next-generation disc format. I, like many users, have already watched tons of HD video without ever having bought a Blu-ray disc. If Apple doesn't need the drives to deliver the same quality content, why should they bother?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Jon said 5:36PM on 10-02-2008
That's fair enough but they should at least update DVD Studio Pro so that we can burn to third-party Blu-ray drives with it. Pro App users will need it even if consumers don't.
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Le Big Mac said 8:49PM on 10-02-2008
I'd rather they just supported bluray burning on externals than include them and drive the price of computers up. If you want/need one, buy one. If not, save your $$ for something else.
Bender Bending Rodriguez said 8:53PM on 10-02-2008
I agree with that completely. I see no reason that a 3rd-party drive needs to be used with Toast to get any BR data storage and that Apple's DVD Studio doesn't support it.
But all whines and moans of Apple not including BRDs in their machines is so asinine and never seems to comes from anyone who has thought it through. I read, "But you can get a Sony notebook for under a $1000 with a BRD", but they never consider that Sony is pushing the device. It's true that other PC vendors offer BRDs, but they don't consider that these are large tray-loading drives, not the 9.5mm slot-loading drives that Apple requires for their Macs, sans the 17" MBP & 24" iMac which get the 12.5mm drive and, of course, the Mac Pro which gets a full size drive.
The 12.5mm drives are going for just under $1000, last time I checked. There was a TUAW blog in late 2007 about a 9.5mm BRD being made but there is has been no announcement.
KarlW said 11:23PM on 10-02-2008
It's not fair enough. Everybody jumps to iTunes as a reason why Apple doesn't support Blu-Ray. It's rubbish. Digital downloads aren't able to replace physical media yet. It will be between 5 and 10 years before most developed countries will be using digital downloads rather than physical media.
People are brought up thinking technology moves fast. They don't understand the fundamental electronics of how it works, it's magic, so they believe it. In reality, technology doesn't move that fast. Much of the world still uses analogue TV and radio, 802.11n is in perpetual draft, and standard definition TV has been the norm despite higher resolution screens being standard in computers for nearly a decade. We still use spinning hard drives, we still use mechanical cars. We'll still use optical media for at least 5 years.
TMM said 3:29AM on 10-03-2008
While BlueRays are a logical step forward, it comes at a time which makes it questionable if it is really worth upgrading to another format.
I hope downloadable content "matures" as fast as possible.
Another 3 Years and you don't need any physical media anyway.
You need it for movies and seldomly for software anyway.
So, what sense does it make to have another physical media format?
Not much, anymore.
Camperton said 3:04PM on 10-03-2008
Bottom line: Apple is letting their Pro line languish. There should be optional Blu-ray drives in all of their Pro machines by now and DVD Studio Pro should have had support for Blu-ray authoring months ago.
Phones, pods and TV's are nice and all but some of us need to work on our actual computers.
EatingPie said 3:45PM on 10-04-2008
Fair enough? File under "MISSING THE WHOLE POINT."
Blu-ray drives can write 25GB and 50GB discs. Those are some mighty convenient backups. With my iPhoto library alone, it takes forever and a bunch of DVD-Rs -- and a TON of hassle -- to backup. A 50GB disc would rock.
This is early in the format life, but it's growing, and people do care. Blu-ray sales are about 10% of DVD sales.
Most importantly, people are now buying NEW movies in Blu-ray rather than DVD. Meaning that their Blu-ray libraries are growing, and they WILL want to computer drives to play their movies. Consider the sales of Iron Man -- which will pale in comparison to Wall-E and Dark Knight.
-Pie
Kelly Martin said 5:39PM on 10-02-2008
I have owned a PS3 since the day they came out and I only own 4 Blu-Ray movies. They are just too expensive and the difference from upscaling dvd's is negligible. The only reason I would want one in my Mac is for storage but again, I am not spending $25-$30 on one 25 GB disc. It just makes no sense for the average consumer.
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Balls said 6:45PM on 10-02-2008
Either you are blind, or your tv sucks or some combination of the two.
On my 52" bravia xbr5, there is a very noticable difference between the video output from my PS3 and the output from my DCDi powered upscaling DVD player.
Tyler said 6:49PM on 10-02-2008
If you really can't tell the difference between an upscaled DVD and even 720p HD, you really should get your eyes checked.
When DVDs first came out, they too were that price. You can get a lot of Blu Ray movies for $20-25, and it is well worth the price IMO, and I am cheap.
As "overpriced" as Mac's are, you would think that most users wouldn't care about that.
Vince said 7:22PM on 10-02-2008
You must have a real crappy TV. Or maybe you've got a SD set so there really is no difference!
Bob S. said 8:13PM on 10-02-2008
Apple should absolutely make reliable Blu-ray R/W drives available. That said. BFD. It's TV, people. It isn't art. It's TV. Can anyone point out any TV that benefits from Blu-ray and explain how? (And Iron Man isn't even that good. It's an CGI-animated comic book. It's like they started with the no-art level of TV and twisted it like a damp towel to wring out every last molecule of creative moisture. CGI animation is the 21st-century kinescope.)
Unfortunately, Jobs has decided that media are dead. He's already phased real DVD support out of iMovie and I don't expect iDVD to updated much; he barely acknowledged its existence as part of iLife '08. He doesn't even like hard drives. So it's safe to assume that Blu-ray support will come from anywhere but Apple.
collide007 said 8:41PM on 10-02-2008
@Bob S - Excuse me? Television and Movies are not art? I think you are sorely mistaken. Cinematography is as much art as a somthing painted by DaVinci as are graphic novels. In the creation of films, every single creative discipline comes together. Granted others fair better than others, but so do paintings.
As for the lack of Blu in macs, i think it will never happen, like many have speculated, Jobs is convinced that physical media is dead. I however like a physical back-up of my movies, and the packaging, because in my opinion covers are art too and all part of the experience.
ChillyWilly said 2:33PM on 10-03-2008
As a PS3 owner with over 20 Blu-Rays, I don't see a need for Apple to include Blu-Ray just yet, but it would be nice as an add on for the Mac Pro.
lanejasper69 said 3:40PM on 10-03-2008
Bingo!
$25-$30 for the media is ridiculous, when you can get a 1TB drive for almost 100.00 now. The Blu-Ray movies re also way to expensive so I don't buy those either, I'd rather upscale a dvd to 1080p than spend 30.00. There is a slight difference in quality (that I hardly notice personally. It's there but doesn't justify me spednng 30.00 for the BD either, and who's to say BD won't be gone in a few years also....I'd be pissed if I would have purchased hundreds of BD movies (like I did with DVD) only to find out it's going to all digital downloads or something more convenient that doesn't take up space in living rooms etc. (disc holders, spinners etc.) Hell, I just spend the last month converting all my DVD's to MP4 (563 of them), backed them up to my 2 2TB hard drive NAS so I have 2 safe backups and "eBayed" the whole collection, I gained a whole room in my house!!! a Ton of case (1250.00) and I still have the movies streaming, and on my NAS and happy as a clam! Good riddance to all that plastic!!!! I'm 100% digital at home now, never use any discs of any kind now, it's all streamed or played right on the computer or TV through LAN. For travel, I "trim" one down in handbrake, toss it on the iPhone and I'm gone. and once in a hotel I remote into NAS and chose what i want to watch. or copy a few to laptop before I leave. discs suck!
smak said 5:40PM on 10-02-2008
3 dvds for the price of 1 blu-ray. That is all the math Joe Average needs to know.
Blu-Ray won't be adopted by the masses until sony realizes that $30 per disc/movie is too fucking much.
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Balls said 6:47PM on 10-02-2008
Amazon carries Blu-ray movies for $18.
smak said 6:31PM on 10-14-2008
Amazon also carries dvd's for $5. What's your point?
jaceface said 5:41PM on 10-02-2008
No one cares???
You let me know when iTunes allows me to download a movie with a 30Mbps data rate.
People who don't get physical mediums are the same people who think that their Satellite TV provider is providing them with "True HD" just because there are 1080 lines of resolution. Pixels are more or less meaningless when you compress to the extent that allows for remote distribution. This includes iTunes. Sure, its fine for The Office, but nothing over the internet and especially nothing in iTunes comes close to the quality of Blu-ray. (save torrents that take days to download).
Aside from the quality issue, also let me know when iTunes lets me store 50GB worth of data for EVERY SINGLE MOVIE on their servers so I can access it with the convenience of a disc.
When those things happen, then perhaps, no one will care.
God i hate this debate.
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Joseph said 6:08PM on 10-02-2008
I take it that you are realizing 2k resolutions w/ your movie theatre projector and are upset that blu-ray isn't 4k.
Even if that was true, you would be an anomaly.
The average person cant tell the difference between blu-ray and DVD on most of the TV's out there. 1. they aren't that skilled. 2. their TV doesn't make enough red