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Apple Backs Blu-ray

Posted by Hemos on from the beta-vs-vhs dept.

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."

8 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. um? by mmkkbb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop

    Against the MS behemoth supporting HDDVD? Why exactly?

    And mow for something completely different, who pays this site's bills?

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  2. HD-DVD will win out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I really think the HD-DVD will win simply becuase of the name.

    Consumer: You mean this is a H D DVD. Wow I have been hearing so much about how good HD is so I want one.

    Dont laugh VHS rolled of tounge better than Beta Max. One has to wonder what marketing genus wanted to call their product beta anyway

  3. About this... by Epistax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I remember reading specs and what it seemed to me was Blu-ray was simply better from the users point of view. I think it took more work on the manufacturers side and forced them to do a lot of extra work for it to be able to read traditional DVDs, but that shouldn't be as important.

    Am I on the ball here or is there really not a complete performance domination by Blu-ray?

    1. Re:About this... by zaxios · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes. Essentially, Blu-ray is better, HD-DVD is cheaper. From Wikipedia:

      "One single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold about 25GB or almost two hours of HDTV audio and video, and the dual-layer disc can hold approximately 50GB."

      "HD-DVD has a capacity of 15 GB (for dual-sided HD-DVD, maximum capacity would be 30 GB)... The cover layer is, as in the case of the DVD, 0.6 mm thick (unlike the Blu-ray Disc at 0.1 mm). The numerical aperture of the optical pick-up head is accordingly the same as that of DVD player (0.65 mm). These factors mean that HD-DVD media is less expensive to manufacture than Blu-ray, not requiring the re-tooling of disc production lines (as is needed for Blu-ray discs)."

  4. Sony & Apple by lameland · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think they planned to annouce this at the MacWorld Keynote, but sometihng kept them from doing it. Why else would they have gotten the CEO of Sony to be there? They could have gotten anybody from Sony to demo their HDV camera, CEO appearances are saved for special occasions. As far as the HDV camera goes, Sony isn't the only manufacturer with an HDV prosumer camera.

  5. Re:The invisible elephant by SoupIsGood+Food · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is entiurely true, and they will quietly go with whatever is the least expensive and time-consuming. Now they can burn a Blue-Ray master with the tools they've been using all along - Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro. The Mac has an enormous presence in the videography field, and not needing to buy or train on special software, apart from the usual upgrade to the tools they're already using.

    So, whether Hollywood likes it or not, Apple's just won the fight for Blue Ray... unless they get tricky, and simultaneously support HD-TV as well, which isn't beyond the realm of possibility.

    SoupIsGood Food

  6. Re:The invisible elephant by Space+Coyote · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The trouble with High-definition porn is that you actually get to see what 10+ years of over-work does to a someone's body. Not a pretty sight. I can't see this being good for the porn industry.

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  7. My Concern Either Way is: by JawzX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Error correction/scratch protection. There may be some (or even many) of you out there who loathed CD-Caddy drives in the early days, but I MISS THEM. One thing the caddy did was protect the disc and prevent scratches. You could stick a caddied disk in your pocket and walk arround with it all day, pull it out, pop it in, and away you go. If you do that with a bare CD, by the end of the day you'll be lucky if it'll still read. Insertion and removal from a case is a pain, and I never met a jewel case as strong as even flimsy caddies. Sure, the prevelence and price reduction of media means if you ruin a disk you just burn another and don't care...

    The problem is (and was/still is with DVD) that high data density makes the media far more succeptable to surface imperfections, be they scratches or dirt. Who hasn't sighed in irritation at rental DVD's that skip or blurt? And if you think DVD's are bad, just think for a minute about an optical media with 10 times the data density! Until synthetic diamond becomes cheap enough to coat consumer level optical discs with, I look forward to the return of our Caddy-Carrying Overloards.

    Either that or there needs to be some SERIOUS error correction implemented. The average consumer just isn't going to want to handle a movie like it was a precious peice of china. Without some solution to this problem neither media will catch on with me. Maybe "they" are just planing on selling you a new copy of the disc every six months, but archivers and folks who use the media for data storage are not gonna like that.

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