“While Sony is working feverishly to secure every Blu-ray drive it can for the PlayStation 3, sources report talks with Apple have the computer maker scheduled to receive the first Blu-ray drives for Macs in February,” Think Secret reports.
Think Secret reports, “Details beyond that timetable are vague at this point, including whether systems will be announced with the new drive that month, pre-announced in January for a later release, or simply be added to manufacturing for an announcement later in the first quarter.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced on March 10, 2005 that Apple was “pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Association board as part of our efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD.”
According to The Blu-ray Disc Association’s website, HD DVD’s pre-recorded capacities are 15 GB for a single layer disc, or 30 GB for a double layer disc. Blu-ray Disc provides 67% more capacity per layer at 25 GB for a single layer and 50GB for a double layer disc. It’s par for the course that Apple backs the superior format while Microsoft supports the inferior one.
It does, however, bear noting that Apple is playing both sides of the fence in a wait and see mode. According to a press release from April 17, 2005, “Apple is committed to both emerging high definition DVD standards—Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. Apple is an active member of the DVD Forum which developed the HD DVD standard, and last month joined the Board of Directors of the Blu-ray Disc Association.”
Related MacDailyNews articles:
TDK pumps Blu-ray capacity up to 200GB per disc – September 02, 2006
Over a dozen Hollywood studios announce movies on Blu-ray – August 29, 2006
Japanese Mac users get first Mac OS X-friendly Blu-ray burner – August 02, 2006
Roxio Toast 7 for Apple Mac adds Blu-ray support – July 25, 2006
Apple and Microsoft showdown over Blu-ray vs. HD DVD? – July 14, 2006
Analysts: Blu-ray coming to Apple Macs sooner than later – July 14, 2006
Ricoh creates ‘universal’ optical disk lens; reads and writes Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD, and CD – July 10, 2006
Blu-ray Disc blank media hits U.S. shelves – May 22, 2006
Blu-ray Disk Associaton: we’ll win DVD format war over HD-DVD – May 12, 2006
RUMOR: Apple asks studios to include iPod video content on Blu-ray discs – April 25, 2006
Sony postpones PlayStation 3 release until November due to Blu-ray delay – March 15, 2006
Broadcom announces decoder chip that plays both Blu-ray and HD DVD – January 03, 2006
Forrester Research: Apple-backed Blu-ray will win over Microsoft-backed HD DVD – October 20, 2005
BusinessWeek: ‘it looks as if HD DVD’s days are numbered’ – October 07, 2005
China to develop own as-yet-unnamed DVD format; Blu-ray vs. HD DVD vs ? – October 07, 2005
Paramount’s decision gives Blu-ray slight lead over HD DVD in next gen DVD format war – October 04, 2005
Record set straight on Blu-ray Disc Association’s superior high definition format – September 29, 2005
Microsoft backs cheaper, less sophisticated, lower capacity HD DVD over Apple-backed Blu-ray format – September 27, 2005
Twentieth Century Fox joins Apple, Dell, HP, others to support Blu-ray Disc format – July 29, 2005
Poll shows Apple-backed Blu-ray preferred by consumers over HD DVD for next-gen DVD standard – July 14, 2005
Microsoft allies with Toshiba on HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray Disc backers Apple and Sony – June 27, 2005
Apple joins Blu-ray Disc Association Board of Directors – March 10, 2005
@ United States of Generica
“Oh yeah, and Bluray is region encoded which means you are stuck with ‘Bluray exclusives’
“Whereas HD DVD has no region encoding, which highlights that ‘exclusives’ are per territory.”
Both formats support region encoding. To even imply otherwise is BS.
“Some movies that are ‘Bluray exclusive’ are only so in USA, whereas in Europe they are ‘HD DVD exclusives’. HD DVD player owners can simply ship from Europe and play movies. Yay!”
As soon as any studio sees cross Atlantic shipping cutting into their profits they will either 1) ship to the other side of the pond or 2) will publish disks with region coding enambled.
Besides…
Currenly approximately 50% of the major studios and distribution houses support Blu-ray exclusively. Currently about 10% of the major studios and distribution houses support HD DVD exclusively. (Universal is the only major studio which is HD DVD only.)
Thus, if this situation holds for the next few years, you can get about 90% of the material out there on Blu-ray. You will be able to get about 50% of the material out there on HD DVD.
“In the longer term, I think both with fail and download will rule the day.”
This will happen with a significant percentage of consumers (at least one third and maybe as many as a half or more) have 20Mbps, or faster, links. As I said above, current movies encoded with either VC-1 or AVC use, on average, more than 20 Mbps in compressed form. People will download movies when they don’t have to deal with huge buffering times — or have to download them overnight. It’s an immediate gratification culture now.
“In the short-term we should all hope for dual-format drives (i.e. like DVD+R and DVD-R) because we don’t really care what the physical structure of the disc is do we?”
The DVD+R and DVD-R could use the same optics. Thus a dual format drive was a matter of firmware. Blu-ray and HD DVD use radically different optics. Thus a dual format drive will need both firmware for both formats and two sets of optics. This means dual format drives will be more expensive than either single format drive — if they ever materialize.
Blu-Ray titles are shipping mostly VC-1 and AVC at this point. MPEG-2 was a temporary thing for early releases only. It’s becoming common for movies to be optimised to fit onto HD-DVD’s smaller 30GB capacity, which of course fits fine on Blu-Ray’s 50GB capacity. If Blu-Ray wins out, we’ll eventually see titles optimized for the much larger 50GB Blu-Ray discs, which means greater bandwidth for the picture quality using the same video codec.
The biggest difference is going to be for computer users like us who would really appreciate the additional 67% storage capacity of Blu-Ray.
The only reason Microsoft is against Blu-Ray is that it uses Java for the control/menu system, and Microsoft is very anti-Java since it’s a cross-platform open source technology.
Man you guys are nerds.
As long as it’s not spelled Blew Ray. Nobody would like that, except Ray.
>MDN’s Take: It’s par for the course that Apple backs the superior format while Microsoft supports the inferior one.
Actually, Microsoft supports HD-DVD which is the format that doesn’t force manufacturers (and thus consumers) to spend on retooling their facilities and altering their processes. It’s easy to be Armchair QB and comment when it’s not your money.
Some sort of HD-DVD/Bluray hybrid format would’ve been nice. I’m sure each camp could benefit from the IP of the other.
Commentary such is MDN often provides is laughable. It’s still amazing that they could “publish” such garbage and be taken seriously by so many.
Also in iMacs ????
I only care for the iMac and I’m still afraid to buy one since I have a feeling that an update is near…Macworld ’07 and Leopard are coming and the 24″ is able to give 1080(i or p) High Definition so it could happen in February.
Also macrumors.com buyers guide predicts an update somewhere near March.
Why o why isn’t the iMac upgradable!!! damn you Apple
I would have bought an iMac months ago if it was.
iHD for the loss.
Come on people, there’s only one real factor here. MONEY.
The format with the cheaper discs will get the support of the studios.
The format with the cheaper drives will get the support of the hardware vendors.
The format that can do both, wins.
As for Apple? Until one side wins, give us a SuperDrive that does both.
I guess Bray in the laptop range is a bit further off??
@ dollar short…
“Come on people, there’s only one real factor here. MONEY.
“The format with the cheaper discs will get the support of the studios.”
Supposedly, though there has been little proof, the cheaper disks are HD DVD. I’ve read some accounts of the HD DVD disks costing as little as one third that of the Blu-ray disks. But, as I mentioned above, only 10% of the major studios and distribution houses are HD DVD only. However, 50% of them are Blu-ray only. There goes that theory!
“The format with the cheaper drives will get the support of the hardware vendors.”
The cheaper drives are from HD DVD. However, currently only Tosh makes HD DVD players. (The RCA player is just a rebadged player made by Tosh.) There are several players being made (and sold) by several different manufacturers for Blu-ray. There goes that theory too.
“The format that can do both, wins.”
Gee is seems like just the opposite of this is happening. So much for *any* of your theories.
@ Ted
While I have yet to physically touch a PS3, from what I’ve read and the pictures I’ve seen, it seems to have a slot loading drive. IF (admittedly a big IF) this drive is thin enough for a laptop — and IF (another huge IF) the manufacturer can make enough to satisfy both Sony’s needs for the PS3 and laptop manufacturers — then a laptop with a Blu-ray drive might not be too far off.
I though someone came up with a Optical lens that can read both? Rendering this debate moot…
Cause I want both if I can…it would be very handy, and way efficient, to be able to scale my data burn from 15 gigs to 50.
Options, I like options.