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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."
...its not Microsoft backing Blu Ray or we'd have to turn against HD DVD.
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?
-mkb
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
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...
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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.
Well, now that Sony's on board we know it's a real standard. This is good news, as I can finally archive my collection of Betamax tapes.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
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?
Just look at the history!
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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.
It'll be interesting to see what the Apple design team comes up for the external blue ray drives. Wonder what color they'll be...
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st =b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=bluray
results = 0
Correlation does not indicate causation. It could merely be the fact that Apple made the technically sound decisions, being the savvy players in the media market they are, or that they were simply lucky.
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.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Dell is backing Blu-ray... RTA
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Its not so much that their two diffrent formats (As there will be at some point a combo drive, it always happens)...
its the fact that there are going to be two _competing_ formats which means...
lower prices!
-ND
When do we get Blu-Ray Burners in G5 Powermacs? 50GB Superdrive Baby!
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.
I might remind you that the iMac was the first PC to come with USB, and not only that, but they used a USB keyboard and mouse. It came with firewire of course, but that is because Apple, 10-some years ago realised something that you have yet to realise: Firewire and USB have different purposes. It's like saying the Parallel port had failed because hardly any modems that worked on it were made.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
look how well Sony got that to take off in the USA
i type this as someone who has a few pieces of MD hardware and actually likes it.... though i think most people that use(d) minidiscs liked them. i never bought pre-recorded music but used it to replace cassettes.
Whichever one I buy will be the one that loses. *kicks beta max*
So why, exactly, should I be pining for a format war?
All that means to me is several years of incompatible hardware, price fluctuation, and annoying-ass FUD campaigns ("Our discs last longer! HD-DVDs melt after three months!" "That's a lie, plus OUR discs have better color density on playback!" "Oh YEAH?? Well, OUR discs...")
A format war might drive prices down more quickly in the short term, but what good is that to me if I need to buy new hardware and don't want to get stuck with a lemon during those few years before either one format wins hands-down or dual-capability drives get introduced?
Now there will be TWO other ways for them to release about a billion old movies and tv shows...I own about 5 copies of the Star Wars Trilogy as it is.
You're right...And they have almost zero presence in the video editing field too...
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.
how many people out there have HDTVs right now? then think that most home users are not using HD cameras. even if everyone had these drives in their hardware tomorrow, it will take some time for HD cameras to trickle down to home users. odds are it will be higher end projects that set the pace for this. that kind of work is more likely to be done on an Apple then a Dell valu-boxen.
at some point what the masses buy will be important for burning discs, but i guess for now it is an issue what formats laptops will be able to play? if Apple, Dell etc etc sell laptops that can only play BlueRay discs and not HDDVD it might matter? if i could pick up both formats in the store, i would obviously buy the one i will be able to watch on a laptop.
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.
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
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.
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.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
You mean Microsoft's tiny market share...in the professional editing industry.
What good is it to have a format, Mr. Anderson, if you have no software to edit it with?
If I had a dollar for every windows box at Pixar and Lucasfilm, plus 50 cents for every windows box at professional editing houses in NY and LA, I'd have about $4.50.
Film and TV professionals like Apple, trust Apple, and they use Apple.
Oh, and Sony has this little thing called a Playstation, which means (shazam) 50 million blu-ray boxes in homes overnight. Once you have it, might as well buy some movies for it, right?
The only people I see so far supporting HD-DVD are content providers who don't sell hardware or do their own manufacturing. The hardware guys all seem to want Blu-ray.
Places like Paramount want the cheapest option because they have to subcontract manufacturing DVDs. What they sell is intellectual property, they don't really care what format it is on. They do care if the needed price point is more then what their customers want to pay (most casual DVD buyers would balk at a $60 Blu-ray disc, but would probably pay $5 to $10 more for HD-DVD).
Hardware manufacturers like Sony want Blu-ray because they need a killer hook to get you to upgrade (like more storage space). Sony is weird, because they are BOTH kinds of company at once, but they still think of themselves as hardware-oriented. They care a lot about format because they want control over sales, they want licensing fees (if applicable), and, most importantly, they manufacture the players. People JUST bought DVD players 3 or 4 years ago. The only people clamoring for a new format are Movie Professionals and Home Theatre Geeks, who tend to favor Blu-ray for technical advantages. They are willing to drop the $$$$$ on a new player, which means boffo profits for Sony. Paramount sees jack shit from player sales. They want to move as many DVDs as possible, they don't care if you use them as coasters. Sony would rather sell you a new player and 7.1 sound system so you can watch (Paramount movie) Top Gun on it.
Apple is a hardware manufacturer. They want to sell more editing suites and copies of FinalCut Pro. More lines on the screen is not going to be an easy sell with the people who buy their stuff. A big storage jump is.
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?
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
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.
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?
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
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
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.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
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.
The iMac wasn't the first PC to have USB (invented at Intel) but was the first PC to totally rely on it for peripheral expansion. Apple dropped all support for SCSI (external storage and scanners), Serial (printers, LAN, and modems), and ADB (Apple Desktop Bus-input devices). This forced the major periph vendors (HP and Epson) to get off their asses and start making USB devices en-mass. Once the snow ball started rolling, others also started producing USB equipment.
Due to multiple hardware manufacturers in the X86 world, there was not much drive to leave legacy connection tech.
Oh yeah, the first iMacs didn't have Firewire. That came with the B/W G3 towers.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Blue-ray will fail because the disks won't play in the current installed base of DVD players. People now have DVD players in their living rooms, SUVs, cars, laptops, desktops, bedrooms, kitchens, vacation homes-- do you really want to explain to your kid that the new Spiderman3 Blue-ray disk they bought won't play in the minivan?
My kids are already complaining that we don't have a minivan to have a DVD player in! I could fit one to the back of my coat but the picture would be a bit jumpy.
The stats that matter are market share of the video editing market--Apple controled 26% of the broadcast/cable market in 2003...imagine where they are now, 2 years later. And that doesn't count the home video market or the Film industry or porn industry (as someone else noted earlier) or video production companies or ad agencies, etc. etc. With actual Hollywood releases being made on Final Cut Pro, 4% doesn't tell the whole picture. Statistics are as straight-forward as the Bible.
Perhaps you didn't realize that Apple developed the IEEE 1394 spec.
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).
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.
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Incorrect. Apple chose DVD-R, the typical format most used in all burners on all platforms when the DVD burn thing began becoming available for computers in a barely affordable way around 2001. The DVD+RW format never really took hold anywhere. Some PC makers used DVD+RWs that Apple systems couldn't read.
Today, Apple places DVD-RW drives in pro desktops and laptops. I don't know if that helps with +RW disc reading.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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.
As others have noted, the PS3 supporting Blu-Ray is probably all it will take to make movie makers produce Blu-Ray compatible content.
The other thing Blu-Ray has going for it is that Sony has a big stake in both sides of the equation.
If Sony DVD players only support Blu-Ray, it will be difficult for other content-publishers to ignore that market share, particularly since the movie-studios really don't have a dog in this fight.
Then, Sony is also a major studio, soon to own MGM as well. If Sony only produces it's content in Blu-Ray format, the other electronic manufacturers will have to support it and create hardware that will support either format. Unlike Universal Studios and Paramount, etc, Sony can get away with this because they do have a dog in this fight, that being their electronics division.
So, Sony Pictures will be willing to give up some market share to support the format, whereas the other studios supporting HD-DVD ultimately will not be willing, since they don't have any stake in the other side of the equation.
The only reason the other studios are even chiming in on this discussion is because they are trying to limit the power of Sony. They have no significant vested interest as Sony does.
If Sony manages to get the hardware makers producers players that support both formats, it will only be a matter of time before nobody produces anything but Blu-Ray content.
Consider this: the competition between +R and -R DVD formats probably helped push new features (not least +-R dual burners) as well as drive down prices. Even compatibility issues, while a hassle at first, in the long run seems to have lead to DVD players that will cope with anything, even round bits of bread being stuck in the drive (as long as they are buttered).
By the time DVD burners reached a price point I could afford, all the format issues had been worked out. Sure, my first drive (Pioneer 104) was -R only, but by that point which format you had didn't really make difference.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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No it will be PiXXXar, a wholly-owned subsdidiary. :)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Sony also pioneered Memory Stick media, which has found a range of uses - all the way from digital cameras manufactured by Sony, to digital camcorders manufactured by Sony! They hold a wide range of advantages over other, cheaper media - such as their stick shape!
Well, video professionals are still using the analog Betacam SP and Digital Betcam. They're based on the Betamax tape shell, but run at higher speeds and have much better image quality than Betamax did.
Sony Professional has certainly made enough profit on those formats to make up for the Betamax losses by now.
My video compression blog
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...
To be fair - there was a time when ALL you could get for computers was DVD-RAM drives. I can't remember if this was a technical limitation, or a move of the DVD consortium to separate computer formats from video (ie to stop piracy).
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.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.