Apple’s iTunes Store “is the largest retailer of music in the world and when Apple announces that customers are now renting over 50,000 movies and TV shows per day, and you’ll get a sense of why Apple is stalling on Blu-ray,” Danny Gorog writes for APC Magazine.
“There’s likely to be one winner in the HD space, and the less legitimacy Apple (who is the leader in the video production space via its Final Cut franchise) gives to Blu-ray, the less likely the format is to succeed,” Gorog writes.
“In Apple’s world of course, all media should come via the iTunes cloud. And if it doesn’t come from iTunes it should be created or ripped by the user. In Apple’s world, the more media that consumers purchase from iTunes, the more powerful and valuable its formats, platform and hardware proposition becomes,” Gorog writes.
“Apple is stalling on Blu-ray for as long as it can, and consumers don’t care. The longer Apple can hold off Blu-ray the better its chances of dominating the market for video and TV show downloads, like it does for music,” Gorog writes.
Full article here.
I not only want a Blu-ray player/recorder, as a professional photographer I need it to archive my work. It’s not just about movies.
“Blu Ray for storage makes sense…”
——————
But does it really?
You can buy a 1TB drive for less than $200 at OWC. How much would the equivalent storage space in BD media cost?
A lot more.
@HD Boy
“I not only want a Blu-ray player/recorder, as a professional photographer I need it to archive my work. It’s not just about movies.”
——————
Archiving you work on an external drive is much cheaper and more space efficient.
i think blueray should be an option on the next mac pro and macbook pro because professionals and even semi-professionals need/want the storage size for burning data to a disc. me as a consumer see no advantage in blueray. itunes movies look as good as from dvd (and renting them is much more convenient) because my 2 year old 42″ plasma can only show 720p. when i buy my next (bigger!) full hd-tv in 2-3 years hd-downloads from itunes will probably have a higher quality then they have today hence i will say the forbidden words: good enough.
but i would see a niche for blueray in comsumer-tech, which are the home enthusiasts who want to have the latest and greatest, the best picture quality available (laser disc anyone?). certainly a market but surely not a mass market.
I’m with the anti-Blu Ray camp. I’ve got a large enough DVD collection and a sharp enough picture using an upconverting DVD player on my 42-inch screen that I won’t ever bother making the switch. I’ll wait for broadband capacity to catch up and feel good that I’m not contributing more to the waste inherent in physical media. I can understand why Blu Ray may be needed in pro machines just from a storage and client file delivery standpoint, but I don’t see a pressing need for the average consumer.
When Blu-ray players sell for 149 and less, is when I will buy one. Getting close, $229 at COSTCO. But, put one in an Apple TV and I would get one to replace my current one in an instant, even if more $$$.
I want blu-ray now. I want it to watch the blu-ray films I buy on my laptop. I want it to edit high-def video. I want it for storage. I want it for many reasons. Ever rent a “HD” movie via Xbox or some similar service? The quality can’t touch blu-ray. Not even close. Portability is also a huge issue for digital downloads. Besides, in the discussion about the future of home movies what’s lost is how much people like building a movie collection and displaying it on their shelf. We’re conditioned to do so – and will continue to do so. Iron Man arrives on blu-ray today. Can’t wait.
A 25GB BD costs about $25
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ne=5000&Ntt=Blu-Ray&Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&N=7334
A 1TB hard drive costs roughly $200
to get the same amount of storage in Blu-Ray discs you will spend about $1000.
Again,
1 TB hard drive = $200
1 TB storage in Blu-Ray discs = $1000
So how does Blu-Ray for storage purposes make sense again?
We need Blu-Ray Data burning to back-up our Media Files. Standard DVDs and even DL DVD just don’t cut it. I need Burnable DVD (optical) that will hold Gigs and Gigs of Data like Blu-Ray Discs or better.
@ Demon
I’m trying to understand why you and others think BD are necessary for storage? Why not just back up to a hard drive? It is about 10x less expensive, and takes considerably less space. It would take 40 physical BD discs to equal the storage of a single 1TB hard drive. See my cost breakdown in my above post.
@MikK,
So, what will be your story in two years when you can get blank BD media for $2 apiece and that same terabyte of storage costs $80?
What are you going to do, write your HD videos you create to hard drives and give people the hard drives? Sounds great.
Hard drives are also very convenient to pack and ship (NOT!).
Also, have none of you ever had a hard drive fail? I have… several. OTOH, I have hundreds of CD-R archives I’ve written since the early-90’s, and practically ALL of them still work perfectly.
Hard drives for archiving? I’ll pass.
It seems like some of you are incapable of thinking BEYOND today.
i’m with the ssd camp
imagine 20 blu rays on a credit card
imagine NO LONGER
@Ecrabb
In two years BD won’t be $2 a piece and hard drive prices consistently fall as well..
BD will never become a standard like DVD so even if you backup to BD chances are clients will generally not have a player to play those files on.
And yes, a single TB hard drive is much easier to pack and ship than 40 physical BD discs.
Worried about hard drive failure? Well you can get a 1TB hard drive and 4 additional backups for the same price as one copy of BD media.
And actually I am thinking of beyond today, physical media is dying, digital media is the future.
You are the one stuck in today’s tech.
I agree with Mike here. Blu-ray is just a stop gap format for the ultimate demise of physical media. It will all just be digitial files in a few short years. FIOS is rapidly being deployed by AT&T;/Verizon and others.
Blu-Ray may have a purpose for a very short while, but hard drives/ h.264 files and the internet are where were headed very shortly.
Blu-ray is, and will remain a niche market. There are just to many other options and ways around the expensive tech, that most consumers will never adopt the format.
@disagree
I think I am better off spending my money on a better pair of glasses, because, if I am not right in front of the TV set, I can’t tell the deference, and I certainly don’t watch movies standing right in front of my TV. File size is files size, compression can be detrimental, but it can also be efficient.
CD/DVD are dead. Jobs already said this. See iDVD. Move on.
See MobileMe. See MacBook Air.
I am tired of waiting for a Blu-Ray player, or even drivers to make it play on my Mac… getting a PS3 for the kids for Christmas… and that will solve the Blu-Ray problem for me.
I wish Apple would stop dragging their feet on the internal drive, or at least some drivers that would let me add a drive to play off of. I thought the DVD player in Leopard was going to do Blu-Ray… but I have read no articles about that happening.
The Dude abides.
lol downloading content may be the future, but not until we all have gigabit ethernet to our homes. Downloaded content in a timely manner is a ways away from true HD 1080p images, which look AWESOME btw.
Besides, I’d like to be able to burn blu-ray discs also. So I say go for it, Apple.
@NCIceman
1 letter, 3 numbers.
H.264
I won’t even _think_ about buying another Mac until one arrives with Blu-Ray inside.
@the dude
Make sure you check Sony’s website for fireware updates. Take care of that before you use the device: ergo Sony BD players.
Who is this Ray anyway? Who cares who blew Ray, jeez.
Please put Blu-Ray in Macs, downloads wont come to replace physical media for years, at least let us have this for a few!
“Who is this Ray anyway? Who cares who blew Ray, jeez.”
Ray, is Mac and Tasha’s friend.