No Blu-Ray for Macs coming soon.....
 

Steve Jobs calls Blu-Ray "a bag of hurt".....

Hardly encouraging news for those with Macs who wish to author BluRay disks...... And pretty outrageous considering that BluRay burners have been on the market for over two and a half years and there are (at least) 11 programs for making BluRay disks on the PC.......

Apple's Steve Jobs calls Blu-ray "a bag of hurt" - Engadget

I read about the Mac laptops with the NVIDIA chipset. I noted they do not have HDMI out and likely do not have HDCP.

The modifications that would need to be made to OS X are indeed "a bag of hurt". I'm doing a story on what's in Vista to meet DRM. Crazy complex.

If ATV had a super chip to upscale downloaded 720p content to FullHD at 1080p24, 1080i60, 1080p60 -- plus the ability to play 1080i60 transferred from your own computer -- it would be a great alternative to BD for many of us.

Don't know about yours, but my Apple TV does output 1080i60. If you use HDMI, it will do 1080P as well. So there must be some scaling going on somewhere.

It's been said for awhile now that Jobs' vision of HD distribution is not in Blu-Ray, but online as in iTunes store.

-gb-

Never mind Jobs 'vision', what about people who actually need to create Blu-Ray discs because a client demands it? I know it is relatively rare right now, but the Mac cannot be used as a pro platform unless it caters to pros needs.

How does Joe Soap Video Company distribute a high definition corporate production via ATV?!

Apple TV's 1080p is actually 720p scaled. It doesn't do real 1080p. Another reasonable professional delivery solution crippled.

I'm getting so tired of this company dragging its feet on integrated professional HD delivery solutions. It has nothing to do with "can't" and everything to do with "won't"...it's mystifying really. If I can spend a thousand bucks on the Blu-Ray workaround, surely they can put out an integrated, reasonably priced solution. This isn't rocket science, it's politics.

Having ranted on Mac, let me just spread the blame around to Sony as well, because Jobs is right. Blu-Ray is a "bag of hurt" -- Sony's licensing structure is ridiculous and complex, playback is inconsistent across machines, and why is the PS3 the best way to play a Blu-Ray disk?

Still, you would think that Mac would make an Apple TV unit that could slay Blu-Ray once and for all and give us something that we need - true high end HD delivery at a reasonable price....

if RED brings their RED RAY project to life, they could clean up in this house of hurt...

Wow.

The entire Hollywood contingent has gone BluRay. Nearly every computer supplier in the world is shipping BluRay in their computers now. BluRay set top units are $299 at Best Buy. Even the former members of the HD-DVD consortium are pushing out BluRay.

And yet you lay the blame at Sony's feet instead of squarely where it belongs... at Apple headquarters.

Apple loyalty never ceases to amaze me.

Apple clearly states the reason they do not want to add this is do to the expense and complexity in the licensing. (Apple is not a company that is short on cash) Sony is just making it very difficult in my opinion for the independant producer to follow with the program, the entire Hollywood contingent as you put it have an unbelievable amount of money at thier disposal and blue-ray is of benifit to them and justifies the expense. Apple on the other hand has no need to add blue-ray other then to please all the independants that need the Blue-ray for thier projects. Hardly enough reason to justify spending all the money and going through all the hassel. That is all I am trying to say. Gary
Note The blue-ray in the computers shipping now are mostly players not burners.

Garbage. Apple don't want to do this because it cuts into their iTunes HD delivery plans. Plain and simple.

No it's not. Dell, HP, IBM/Lenovo, etc., all have Bluray. You think it's more difficult somehow for Apple than for them?

Really? So those people who own apple for reasons other than independent production wouldn't like to take advantage of the 25/50GB storage space? Or do you believe that Apple's primary market is those doing independent film?


Call it like you see it man, but for every other major manufacturer of laptops, it WAS worth the expense. But then, they aren't pushing a competing technology to BluRay.

Really? When is the last time you bought a laptop? When I bought mine this summer, every manufacturer I looked at had BluRay burners available in the machine if I wanted it. Except Apple of course, so no MBP for me. But I am enjoying my Dell M6300.

oops.. i'm gonna hold my horses on Mac conversion if thaz true..bluerays gotta be in MAc in 2010 the latest.

Just a shame that a new Mac buyer, even if they buy the latest Mac laptops introduced yesterday, doesn't even have a way to play BluRay disks, let alone author them. By the time Apple implements BluRay support, the format may already be replaced..... :-)


Larry

I'm quite certain that Apple is trying to push HD movies through the iTunes store, and that's their main motive.

However, what about the Pros needing Blu-Ray burners to create their HD media.. wasn't the year of HD 3 years ago now?! I for one have been shooting HD exclusively for 3 years now! Wish I could burn it!

Well, there certainly isn't any BR band wagon. I have not had a client yet ask for a BR DVD. The industry is still pumping out SD-DVDs, and as long as they do, BR is probably DIW. Compare the cost of an up-converting SD-DVD player to a BR player, and the quality on an HD screen and the public is not going to commit to BR. I'm certainly not.

The real advantage is the increased data storage, but that's not going to be a market driver.

Boy, I remember all these same arguments when DVD was replacing VHS. Up-converters sound a lot like S-VHS. An improvement on older technology who's days are numbered.

I completely disagree. I used to shoot my long form projects on miniDV, edit on my drives, and write the raw and finished projects out to full size DV. I'd make two purchases a year of full-sized DV tapes.

This summer, I bought a BluRay burner. And an HD camera. Now, I shoot onto media cards, edit on my drives, and write raw and finished materials out to BluRay. Same workflow, new tools. What I didn't expect, was that I would start archiving SD projects to BluRay. And storing work data out to BluRay. I bought 10 50GB BluRay disks two months ago. I have 3 left, and 3 more video projects to finish before mid December.

It's merely a matter of time before the hardware (servers, PCs, etc.) start to catch up to the BluRay spec. I'd give it 18 months. The internal burners will be about $100-$150, the media will be $6-$10 (same place DL-DVD was 2 years ago) and we'll be switching.

Apple can keep their head in the sand if they want to. But the only HD people will be downloading is for their iPods. No one is going to way half a day to download 30GB worth of movie data to watch on their home computer connected to their flat screen. The infrastructure just isn't there yet to support what Apple is reaching for. The network has not yet replaced the disk as the best delivery medium, regardless of what the boys in the think-tank are dreaming up.

I see the application as an archive medium, but are you guys seeing a lot of requests for Blu-ray delivery? Everyone I know who has a Blu-ray actually has a PS3... and I just throw an MP4 on a thumb drive and it works for them. Are your clients actually requesting Blu-ray?

Doesn't affect me yet and I frequently supply video projects for projection at independent film theaters. Most theaters around here don't use Blu-Ray, they have Digi-Beta, DVD and/or some sort of server feed into their HD projectors. Some theaters still will not play from DVDs because of incompatibilty problems from cheap DVD-R discs. I've seen what can happen with an incompatible DVD in a theater and it's not fun for the owner. The DVD plays great for 60 minutes and then stutters and freezes. Refunds for the audience! Tape is still more reliable. And the up-conversion usually looks great except for titles.

The turn over from VHS to DVD took hold after most new DVD players were designed well enough that they could play most DVD-R discs. Before that DVD was an unreliable distribution method unless they were replicated which is still out of the reach of most people's DVD needs.

Apple will support Blu-Ray sooner then later but with blank media around $15 a disc and cheap burners around $350 don't expect a lot of action right now. And how much of these prices comes from the Sony/Blu Ray license fees?

So, how would a Mac user create an HD MP4 with AC3 audio that will playback properly in a PS3?

I've wondered this as well. You can use the compressor Apple TV setting and it creates a 960Xsomething .m4v file. You can change the extension to .mp4 and it works great on the PS3. Problem is, while it looks real nice, it ain't HD.

As for Apple and Blu-Ray. As a long committed Apple user, I think Apple IS holding back because it will hurt iTunes HD downloads. I don't really care though because I don't have a use for Blu-Ray right now. The discs are ridiculously expensive with extremely slow burn times.

I agree, I also think Blu-Ray is going nowhere on the consumer side. There's nothing wrong with it, it's technically great BUT, traditionally, consumers switch formats because the new technology is more convenient, not because the technology is technically superior. I don't understand why a large part of the industry is constantly forgetting this - Sony most of all - it's like they believe their own sales & marketing hype. The ma$$ market could care less about "hi-resolution" they just don't want to jump through hoops to get their music and movies.

For example, I'd argue that the following format changes were accepted by consumers because they gave consumers a more convenient way to listen to and store their music.

LPs to Audio cassette
(easier to store, more portable, even more important to the mass market than "better audio quality" or random access to the music)

Audio cassette to CDs
(even easier to store, and much more portable, and I get my random access back again, oh and the nice salesman says it's better audio quality, he's so nice)

CDs to iPods
(extremely easy to store, extremely portable - and it really nails the point, people want convenience over technical quality. They are willing to downgrade their music from 16-bit 44khz to .mp3 because it's just much more convenient - they don't have to jump through hoops to listen to their music.

If you look at almost all mass accepted consumer formats, it's the same story over, and over, and over, and over again.

Betamax to VHS (hey great I can record longer!)
VHS to DVD (takes up less shelf space, quick start/stop, random access)
DVD to .... ??? Anything more convenient ??? (hint: not Blu-Ray)

And that's what I think is Blu-Ray's main problem, the only real selling point is higher resolution, but people don't switch because of better resolution, they switch, because the tech got out of the way, and watching the movie became more convenient.

And all this from someone's who is currently collecting Blu-Ray discs for his collection!

Wow, I'm in the exact opposite boat. My clients keep requesting BluRay since I switched to shooting HD. I've delivered a COUPLE of HD-DVD ISO on DVD disks authored in DVDSP to the handful of my clients that have HD-DVD players and they are thrilled. LOTS of interest in my market. Mind you, lots of people around here have large screen HD TVs as well. The winter here is 5 months long, we spend a LOT of time indoor in front of the TV from December to March or April.

Name any other medium that can store one hour of 1920x1080p video in a playable format for less.

ANY...


And if you can't, tell me the gap between 1 hour on BluRay, and 1 hour on the next closest format.

Soooo.... Why are people buying flat-panel TVs? They aren't any more convenient. They have been costing a boatload more than tube TVs. Really, their main claim to fame is that they offer higher resolution. Is it perhaps because the manufacturers essentially stopped shipping CRT based units?

So what happens when all the new movie releases shift toward BluRay? Much like what happened when we used to go to the store to rent movies, and the new releases were only on DVD...

tape me thinks

Since when is expense a concern of Apple? This is the company that was charging $400 for a gig of RAM not so very long ago. Add it as a BTO option for the MBP and roll the licensing fee into the cost of the drive. When a laptop has an entry level price of $2k, I don't think cost is a major factor for the consumer.

Without a HD feed (which most people, here at least despite owning 'HD ready' sets don't have) the resolution isn't a good as the CRT sets...they look pretty on the wall and take up a lot less space/real estate in your living room. :)

True.

I've noticed that today with corporations and Politics there's no fear in dishonesty. PC manufacturers have Blu-ray playback devices in laptops that are in the Macbook range. The difference is HP, Acer and others aren't trying to sell you HD rentals online.

Apple's never been a richer company yet they still deliver hobbled hardware and overpriced accessories (which they aren't alone to be honest).

They aren't supporting Blu-ray as of yet because of "profit" not "cost"

Well it remains to be seen if the studios start shipping movies on Blu-ray first and then DVD. I don't think it's going to happen in this economic climate.

I'm willing to bet that this is going to be the worst Christmas from a sales standpoint than we've seen in over a decade. I know i'm going very light and no one I know is looking forward to the Christmas rush.

At 26 bucks a Blu-ray movie in stores compared to 10 bucks for a DVD I doubt that Blu-ray makes a splash. Even if consumers get $200 players (which is 4x the amount they want to pay for a DVD player) they still realize the movies are twice as much.

Well I'd argue that flat panels TVs are more convenient for the house. The mass market consumer is thinking you get a bigger screen but it takes up less room - you actually get space back even though the screen is bigger. Heck I can even hang it on the wall like a painting, how convenient is that. Plus the smaller flat panel TVs are much easier to move around than a similarly sized CRT, many people who would have a hard time bringing a small CRT home would probably will find a small flat panel relatively easy.

Consider this, what do the majority of people who buy flat panels hook it up to? A hi-def source? No way, they hook it up to a DVD player, cable TV, or as my neighbor has done hooked it up in the kitchen with an antenna. Even though the required video scaling always looks worse than if they'd stuck with a CRT TV. But convenience is a big factor, and the low profile of flat panels is very convenient and probably the biggest selling point.

Same goes for buyers of computer LCD monitors vs. CRT - it's just more convenient, you get all that desk space back.

Well, I don't see this argument. Majority of people don't buy movies, they rent them. Disk as a medium is still going to be on the market for a while. Also a lot of places (rural areas) still have limited access to high speed internet, so the whole issue of streaming content is still far far away. I am sure companies from China will start flooding the market with cheap blue-ray machines soon. After all the price is almost half what it used to be a year ago. I just purchased blue-ray player, even though I am a cheep bastard. Personally I think Apple is making a huge mistake on this one.

Money talks. Those companies won't abandon DVD, it's a huge well established market, and their main bread and butter. Don't get me wrong, Blu-Ray will penetrate the market place, but I think more like a modern day Laser Disc than the gigantic behemoth that is DVDs. Something will eventually replace DVDs, but based on past consumer format changes, I really don't think it will be Blu-Ray.

I think the next consumer delivery format that replaces DVDs will have this one thing going for it - it will have less barriers between the consumer and their movies.

At no time, did laserdisc EVER have the Hollywood support that BluRay is currently enjoying in it's infancy. I am not saying that the adoption of BluRay as a replacement to DVD will be forthcoming in the near future. But I do think it will happen.

Again, I give it 18 months, before we start to see a significant shift. I suspect that by this time next year, BluRay will be seeing earlier releases than DVD. Studios do not want to support two expensive formats. I think if the economy wasn't in the tank, the adoption would be quicker.

But hey, I could be wrong. I have been before. Regardless, I think Apple has made a significant error in judgement by not supporting BluRay at this point, and I do think it will come back to bite them. In fact, if this forum is any indication, it already is.

Dude, I know the answer. And I know what those tapes cost. Go price an hour of HDCamSR and get back to me. In fact, I'll help you.

64 minutes of HDCamSR is running about $102.

BluRay archiving only looks expensive to people coming from miniDV. Those who've been running DigiBeta, HDCam, HDCamSR, etc., know what a bargain the Sony discs are. Not to mention you don't need a capture deck at the end of the day to get your footage off.

By the way the Sony SRW-5000 HDCamSR deck has a MSRP of $88k. That's a lot of BluRay discs...

Heck I could be totally wrong as well, but I agree that's a very good point in favor of Blu-Ray. I don't know enough to say how significant it is. But as someone who likes watching Blu-Ray movies, it's a very good thing. Let's agree to meet at this same post next year to see what happened. By then I hope to own a Macbook Pro that supports Blu-Ray.

You missed my saying "super chip." Every graphics card can scale. But there are a whole range of sophistication in doing it WELL. For example, scaling can kill diagonals. Scaling can increase noise.

You also missed my point is that for content sent over your own network -- ATV should natively support anything you send it. ATV is now "useless" for anyone shooting FulHD 60i since not only must you downscale it, you need to convert the frame-rate.

Apple, as usual, is using their whole corporate structure to support selling media. This wouldn't be so bad if Apple's idea of what to sell wasn't totally biased toward USA teenagers. (Something BD is currently doing as well. But, we know from DVDs that eventually a huge world-wide film library will be available.) That's one reason I bought my VAIO. Apple users need to keep an open mind.

PS 1: Given the new thin design there may be no BD drive available for laptops. If there are no drives, Apple has no option.

PS 2: Since the "bag of dirt" is the need to extensively modify OS X to support DRM. I can imagine an application that is launched by OS X but runs without using the kernal. It would simply play a BD to the computer screen. Totally self contained. No external output.

PS 3: MacPro's don't support SATA BE burners. But, Apple could fix this and install BD burners in the MacPro. One doesn't need to play a BD to burn one.

Fair enough!

You sir, are a formidable opponent! :) (I hope you get that joke)

And you sir are a quick study! (I love that segment)

I agree that Blu-Ray is not revolution that DVD was. Blu-Ray looks great but people are very happy with DVDs on their big flat screens even with the up-converting. If the government didn't force the television transmission change-over for next year, we would not see the switch over to HD screens. Professional equipment will always change but the consumer market is slow to improve. Remember, people were happy with SLP VHS! People are happy watching YouTube! Quality isn't the issue, content delivery is. Many kids never buy a CD, they get their music as files and are perfectly happy.

I know a super audiophile with a system in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He only plays LPs because of their "superior" audio quality. His system sounds really, really, really good and some records almost sound like the musician is right there. I never have heard a system like that before but I can hear the surface of the LP and whatever imperfections are there. This drives me crazy and I prefer CDs or downloaded audio files because of that. The super audiophile will not play CDs or downloaded files on his system because they sound compressed to him.

Apple maybe missing the ball on this but right now it's a small ball and Apple will have the chance to pick it up in the future.

HDV Tape.

Because you can't seriously compare the cost of Blu-Ray media to HCamSR tape stock or even HDCAM because of all the BDs I own none look as good as an HDCam/SR master ;-). Plus we are talking about a DISTRIBUTION format and not a production format.

The best looking BD I have so far is Iron Man and during many scenes you can clearly see macroblocking and compression artifacts (akin to HDV recording). I have a 90-inch front projector (Sim2 1080) and can see everything. I also have at my access an SRW1800 with many hours of HDCam masters and they look better than the resultant BD (from Encore or CinemaCraft encodes).

All that aside.... I did over 20 HD productions so far this year and only one client has asked for blu-ray discs. Go figure.

In my area of the woods nobody really cares about BD yet.

But....
I agree with you as far as how expensive Apple products are compared to everyone else. But let's be real: Microsoft died on the cross for all the Windows users to enjoy blue ray on their desktops. HP and the rest are basically along for the ride because they didn't spend millions of dollars to write hundreds-of-thousands of lines of code of DRM to satisfy the blu-ray licensing consortium's requirements of end-to-end encryption. But HP and the rest do have to pay about $30/computer for BD playback licenses.

Apple, on the other hand, writes the OS as well as designs most of the hardware so they ought to spend their $19 billion of cash in implementing BD DRM on the OS X side.

best regards,
-GReg

HDV tape does not store 1920x1080p, which is what I asked. Yes, it will store 1440x1080i. I was asking for another alternative format that could store what BluRay could store. HDV tape isn't it.

There is no reason at all that BD can't look exactly the same as HDCamSR. I can store uncompressed 10 bit 4:4:4 video on a BD just like you can on HDCamSR tape. Granted, I can't store an hour of it. Please note that my comment was not about BluRay as a medium for playback in a BluRay player, but as a mechanism to store playable or editable video. If we are talking about AVCHD/MPEG2 BluRay spec video, then you're right, it won't touch HDCam or HDCamSR.


As anyone would expect.


For me, it's not so much the client side that I am worried about. And at this point that's not where I see Apple dropping the ball. It's the mastering side. For SD, I am now mastering to BluRay because frankly it's a better solution than laying off to full sized DV tape which is what I've been doing. My hour long Cineform 1080p master from 2 weeks ago is about 20GB. That's a $14 BluRay disk. How do I lay that off to tape? And what is it going to cost me?

Ok, but in my area, they do.


I completely understand and agree with people not seeing the big deal about finishing on BluRay for clients. I get it. But what about US? What about the content producers? The ability to lay off finished hour-long, 1080p masters isn't worth $14 a disk? Or to lay off 2 hour long shows for $35 a disk in full HD?

Am I crazy here?

i'm a big rabid apple fanboy. Wont even consider anything else. I also do video production for a living.

From my perspective, the lack of blueray is annoying. I dont care so much about HD distribution (though that would be nice), but would really really like a way to burn more than 4gig discs while on location.

It wont move me to pc, but until apple puts blueray on a laptop, i probably wont be lured into upgrading.

What i really want is for apple to return to the video producers friend status. A 12" macbook with a 1920x1080 transflective sunlight viewable screen that can transform into a tablet with 1/4-20 mount points all over it, and a "video display input port" that lets you hook up pro video gear and monitor realtime with no lag for hours and hours. mmm. Oh, and a wireless broadcast to other macvideobooks so the director can watch from the shade. mmm.

Ok, while we are at it, let it record uncompressed while viewing the lag free input. mmm..

it makes me sad that i have invested so much $ in equipment (and time researching/learning how to best use it!) so i can produce the best quality video possible, only to be unable to output it. i work in a HDV world but produce an lesser quality product for my clients. even if BD is not widespread, i want to provide my clients with BD in addition to the SD DVD, so that in the future they can use it, and all my efforts at achieving the best quality can actually be SEEN. i know there are 'workarounds' (more $$$...) but i have invested in a 'professional' suite of programs/computers that i would expect should cover something as crucial as outputting to the highest quality format-ASAP!
on another note, i am happy that i didn't wait to buy my macbook pro...