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."

Comments

IBM

[static0verdrive]

Now if IBM could jump on the Blu-Ray bandwagon we'd be set!! We (the OSS croud, linux personally) would see a lot more support with HP, Apple plus IBM's support...

The invisible elephant

[daveschroeder]

Forget about Sony, HP, Matsushita, Apple, Dell, and Disney...

The porn industry, which releases 11,000 titles a year, will likely silently decide which format "wins" (previous slashdot coverage).

And some of the bigger porn houses are coming down on the side of Blu-ray because of its capacity advantage over HD-DVD. That the porn industry would have such an influence comes as no surprise to those who know just how big the industry really is.

Re:The invisible elephant

[Ohreally_factor]

Either the Blu-ray group or the NYT is a bit mixed up, but to your credit you got it half right. Blu-ray has no direct application to FCP or iMovie. What they're thinking of is DVD Studio Pro (as you note) and iDVD.

Also (completely different point), I see this as Apple giving support to Sony. Remember when they had the Sony VP on stage at the MWSF keynote? Now that Stringer is the new head honcho at Sony, I've been wondering if we'd see more of a patnership developing, or less.

And totally in the realm of speculation, maybe Stringer was in on the attempted deal to partner Sony with Apple on iTunes/iPod. This could be the main reason Stringer is in, and Ideo (is that the guys name?) is out. Sony had a chance to reverse their fortunes, but turned it down.

Sucks to be an early adopter

[Eradicator2k3]

When you consider that DL DVD drives have been out for some time (reasonably priced), yet the media still costs about 10 bucks a pop, can you imagine what the Blu-Ray (or HD) discs will go for? At the risk of dating myself (not like anyone else would, HA), I was an early adopter for the *new* high-density 3.5" floppies at about $80 for a box of 10.

Realistically, once the next-generation drives and discs are out, it will lower the price of DL media into something more affordable.

The Real Question

[Cadallin]

When do we get Blu-Ray Burners in G5 Powermacs? 50GB Superdrive Baby!

Re:The diffrence that matters

[rdc_uk]

No.

As with DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W). Prices will be similar, devices will have either singular-support, or very sketchy dual-support.

Current / Older home DVD-Players and DVD-ROM drives will either be incompatible, or very, very picky.

Prices will be in fact pretty high for a good time because take up will be slow until the 2nd gen of the technology comes through (reasonably solid dual-format writers, common and solid dual-format players).

Meanwhile, someone will have produced DivX++, that can re-encode the content of a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD, allowing it to be written to a standard DVD, in a quality that is acceptable for the drop in price. It is these files that will be popular, downloaded from the net.

After a while of that, people will start to use HD-DVD or Blu Ray DVD to backup their multiple DivX++ images onto one big-ass disc.

At which point the tech companies will reveal their plans for SDD-DVD (super-duper-density DVD), and the competing standard Puce-Ray DVD. Which will be sony's concept. These discs will be the future because they hold such better-qualtiy movies, and the capacity makes piracy impractical...

And the big circle-jerk will begin again!

Re:Sony & Blu-Ray

[Adrilla]

The Playstation is exactly the thing that's gonna help this format survive. Because every PS3 sold will turn someone into an instant blu-ray drive owner. (let's not forget how the ps2 turned a lot of people into dvd drive owners)

I'm really pulling for Blu-Ray.

[bigtrouble77]

You have two competing formats... All other things being equal, one supports significantly more storage space than the other. Just based on that Blu-Ray wins hands down. Unfortunately, what I think could happen is that movies will be released on the two formats with identical quality, only the Blu-Ray version will be stuffed with more advertisements. And for PC archival purposes, I can't imagine anyone supporting hddvd. Blu-Ray will finally give us an optical media format with nearly as much capacity as a DLT tape. -BT

Re:Not really...

[porcupine8]

But in this case, I don't think you need causation. If Apple is just really good at picking winners, then that has the same effect on blu-ray predictions as Apple being really good at causing winners. Either way, if Apple backs a technology there is a very high chance that it will be successful, whether or not it's Apple's fault.

And with something like this, it could become causation - Apple builds up a good track record of picking winners, other companies notice this, and when Apple makes their pick other companies start to mirror them based on their past performance, thus making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Blu-ray has several things going for it. . .

[doctor_no]

Blu-ray has several things going for it. . .

Playstation 3 inclusion of Blu-ray would prove to be a massive boost for the standard as it automatically gives an instant installed base in the tens of millions. As initial players will likely be relatively pricey, it's usually difficult to start the momentum to get enough installed base on the market so that studios would want to produce content for it, and more content usually then convinces more people to buy into the standard. However, by PS3 being Blu-ray compatible automatically creates a massive installed that studios can produce content for to start the ball rolling.

Secondly, Blu-ray seems to be more scalable then HD-DVD with comapanies planning 4-layer 100GB and 8-layer 200GB multilayered disks. Also, Blu-ray seems to be getting more hardware on the market then HD-DVD, especially since Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic, Technic, Fisher, etc) are backing it. Sony has just annouced Blu-ray drive for the PC that can write to write-once 50GB disks or rewritable-50GB disks.

BLu-ray drive for PC

Re:It doesn't matter

[jester22c]

I disagree. While backwards compatibility is a very consumer friendly way to gain sales, eventually all players will have to be upgraded anyway.

While higher capacities are needed for HD video (obviously) higher [b]density[/b] on discs is necessary to expand volume as well as dataflow. The higher the density of the volume the faster the potential maximum throughput.

HD-DVD will most likely do quite well because of all of the distributors backing it (and the promised inherent copyright protection) and a whole new set of players and burners will will be on the market backwards compatible or not.

Blu-Ray seems more promising in my eyes. With the increased density, discs will debut at large capacities and increase from there as multilayered formats arrive. Besides... with the PS3 using Blu-Ray I will most definately have a BR drive in my PC.

All in all I think a decent sized battle of funding and contracts will come forth and hopefully us consumers will see a bit of a downward price trend because of the saturation of the market.

Re:HD-DVD will win out

[Tim Browse]

Porn always, always, always drives mass technology adoption.

It's certainly why I got an mp3 player. And a mobile phone. And a games console.

Oh no...wait...

Re:And that is why...

[WinterSolstice]

Especially since Windows had lousy support for "Useless Bus" until about... well, XP still can't find my mouse if I unplug and replug it hot ;)

-WS

Re:It doesn't matter

[The Bender]

The backwards conpatibility that really matters is one that is invisible to the consumer. It is the thousands of installed DVD production lines worldwide that can be modified to churn out HD-DVDs with very minimal modification (an no modification at all for the most recent lines).

The manufacture of Blu-Rays requires whole new lines, unbelievable expense, and technology that isn't quite fully developed yet (and is very immature).

the digital error: why high-capacity dvds?

[brw12]

I love dvds for many reason, but I hate their unreliability. They degrade far less gracefully than cds, grinding to a halt instead of skipping. I've had even the newest dvd players, and current computers, crash when encountering minor dvd scratches.

So is it a good idea to increase the dvd's capacity? Are the Blu-ray or HD-DVD consortia doing anything to improve digital degrading?

Or is digital storage the wrong form for physical distribution of entertainment? Should we be pushing for refinements in analog instead? After all, my lps may be scratchy, but they all still play, as opposed to kill bill 1 which just crashed last month on my dvd player...

Re:It doesn't matter

[cens0r]

If that is the case, DVD will win. I don't see the porn industry switching over anytime soon. They didn't switch to DVD because of the higher quality, they switched because DVD's are cheaper to manufacture and ship. The quality is already good enough and I don't think people have any desire for HD porn. So unless HDDVD or BluRay become cheaper than regular DVD, porn isn't going to change.