Slashdot Mirror
Apple Backs Blu-ray
zaxios writes "The New York Times is reporting that Apple has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, and will use Blu-ray in upcoming versions of iMovie and Final Cut. The move puts Apple among Sony, Matsushita, Dell, HP and Walt Disney in supporting Blu-ray; companies including Toshiba, NEC, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, Universal and Paramount are pledged to adopt the competing HD-DVD format. Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop, but the division in Hollywood and notebook manufacturers between the two HD videodiscs will ensure the bona fide format war we were all secretly pining for."
Apple among Sony, Matsushita, Dell, HP and Walt Disney
For those of you that don't recognize the name "Matsushita", they're probably known to you as Panasonic.
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st =b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=bluray
results = 0
Dell is backing Blu-ray... RTA
========
77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
Shall we review some of the technology apple backed before it got big on the desktop?
Apple's decision to ship USB on the iMac marked the start of USB as a consumer interface.
Ditto for firewire, floppy-less machines.
And what's MS gonna do with HD-DVD? Ship computers with it? Disable Blu-Ray drives? E-THIS-FORMAT-SUCKS: ?
The PS3 will use Blu-Ray. That means prices will begin to fall mid-2006 (when it's released in Japan)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
When they said ATRAC they meant MiniDisc. ATRAC is the data format used on MD....
Apple only started supporting DVD+R from January this year. Previously, they had been DVD-R only.
Apple has only ever supported DVD-R for recording.
Now that DVD+/-R recorders have been out for 2 year, Apple is still pushing just the -R.
I know, I just bought an iMac G5 last month, and annoyingly, you have to buy blank -R's, not the more common and popular +R's.
Please stop spreading misinformation. HD-DVDs won't play on "the current installed base of DVD players." HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are read with lasers at 405 nm; DVDs use lasers at 650 nm. Nevertheless both HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives can be made fully backwards compatible with DVDs.
I seem to remember USB already being established in the PC universe when the iMac first came out. As I recall, Jobs incorporated USB because he wanted all the same cool devices available for the PC to also be usable on the Mac (with the suitable application of proper drivers, which cost little to produce).
Apple was not the first to incorporate USB ports on their computers, that much is correct. However, until Apple introduced the iMac and essentially forced USB on their users, there were very very very few actual USB devices available. It was only after the iMac came out that you could begin finding USB devices in your typical computer store.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
The iMac was the first PC that shipped where you had to use USB because there was no other way to connect a mouse and keyboard.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Almost every media standard Apple had backed early has succeeded overall in the market. Ones that Apple snubbed (or where it has been snubbed e.g. MPEG4) have had real problems getting established, and have mostly failed.
Since when is Apple snubbing, or being snubbed by, MPEG4?
MPEG2 has trouble catching on?!? Just because you don't use it in your computer "piracy" world does not mean that it is not used. MPEG2 is used across the country for any real video work because it is basically uncompressed. This means News stations, Cable Stations etc...
I know for a fact that Local and National commercials across the nation are encoded in MPEG2. Also, that most of the News clips that you see on TV are sitting on a video content server as an MPEG2 stream. MPEG2 has a whole plethora of hardware vendors that make nothing but MPEG2 Encoders and Decoders so how exactly is it having trouble catching on?
Firewire never gained more of the market share over USB, and that is why all DVDs use MPEG4.
sigh...
Firewire is to multimedia as USB is to keyboards.
Seriously, Different purposes and it is the same reason that Firewire is part of every camcorder shipped today and USB is part of just about every keyboard or mouse shipped today. You could say that the floppy drive is one of the most successful devices in history because it shipped unchanged for so long, but that doesn't mean that you can use it instead of a hard-drive.
All DVDs use MPEG4? WRONG. MPEG2 is the standard DVD codec. While many newer DVD Players may support new formats such as MPEG4 or DiVX, studio productions are rarely encoded in these since they need the disk to play everywhere. Don't believe me about MPEG2... Look here. That is the first link I found to it, but it technically is the DVD FAQ that every site backs.
I hate to break it to you, but Blu-ray actually does it one better by allowing dual-layer DVDs on the same disc. (The HD-DVD versions only have the 4.7gb) http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000917024829/
HD-DVD pretty much has zero advantages at this point.
Yet, does anyone seriously claim that McDonald's has that much control over world events?
Yes and no. Thomas Friedman, I believe, put forth that idea years ago... but later admitted that it isn't true (after all, 19 McDonalds-laden NATO members bombed the crap out of Serbia, which has McDonalds). Interesting idea, Tom, but doesn't really pan out.
You are right that he wasn't saying that the presence of McDonalds prevented war between countries. It was, however, Friedman's thesis that the factors that led these countries to get a McDonalds did have an effect on whether they became embroiled in international conflict. Which is much more sound reasoning. He was just wrong, is all.
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
Same problem with these as with those "disc stabilizer ring" snake-oil they used to sell...
Despite standards, not all discs are EXACTLY the same size, fit is variable. Ever used a disc stabilizer ring? I did once. Put a stabilized audio disc in my 40x read CD drive, the ring blew apart under centrifugal stress and jammed the drive. Had to dissasemble it to get the disc out. Luckily no damage to the drive, but what a PAIN IN THE ASS. These things use the same sort of plasti-rubber rings to hold them on. I don't trust 'em. Good idea, but execution leaves much to be desired.
There are some "industrial" solutions out there that I have seen marketed to video rental stores. Same basic idea, thin plastic sheet; but these things use adhesive to stick them to the disk at the edges and center. Again, centrifugal force from high-speed drives will stretch the plastic and cause them to blow apart eventualy. If the plastic should actualy be scratched badly enough to tear it, they then disintegrate all over the inside of your drive. I've seen it happen. It's messy. Not to mention the residual adhesive gunk on your disc and the difficulty of putting them on perfectly straight. Even with one of those centering jigs they never quite hit the right place. Then there's always the catch of a label-side scratch, Good-bye media.
I still advocate caddies (or diamond coating *grin*) as the only real solution for people who don't want to bother handling discs with extreme care.
I love my Skip Dr. and wouldn't trade it for a case of disc protectors, but it sure would be nice to just not have to worry.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
"Video professionals STILL use Beta."
They use Betacam, not Betamax. It's a different format.
MPEG2 is used across the country for any real video work because it is basically uncompressed
What are you talking about? MPEG-2 video is usually compressed somewhere between 8:1 and 30:1. And nobody uses it for (serious) editing. Video is often distributed in MPEG-2 just because there is a very good quality to compression ratio. It's portable, and fits on DVDs because it's compressed.
Sidenote is neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray support the DV format as an official video format, which means joe public still has to go through the hassle of transcoding DV to MPEG2/WMV/H.264 to play home movies. Isn't the world tired of making ugly compressions of compressions yet?
Such a shame given a Blu-Ray disc should be able to hold a couple hours of DV video.
Same is true on the other end of the spectrum. If you have low quality MPEG4 files or H.263 files you have to transcode them to MPEG2/WMV/H.264 as well. Again a compression of a compression.
Why can't these video formats specify the cumulative sum of all major codecs invented at the time of the format? Is it really that hard to mandate ffmpeg in the Blu-Ray spec instead of a proprietary Microsoft WMV codec?