localzuk Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Apple has no plans for BluRay support - as they believe optical media has had its day, and internet streamed media is the future (ie. AppleTV, AppStore etc...). Game makers are also moving to online downloads too, both on PCs and on consoles.
mthomas08 Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Hmm I would personally say Blu Ray is the future similar to DVDs. They took a while to take off like 3D movies, now look, movies are going more and more 3D and BluRay is becoming more popular. Downloads is the way forward but BlueRays are high quality and people will still purchase them. You never really know though, with bigger TVs coming the norm, people will want higher quality. Films like Avatar are proving that 3D + high quality really does work well. I think its a bad move on Apples part but then no one buys a MAC to watch films. With BlueRay readers so cheap now it does not matter (Plus all in 1 TVs).
Rydra Posted January 19, 2011 Author Posted January 19, 2011 Unless internet providers stop restricting bandwidth, stop putting download limits, and start providing reliable connections, these things will not take off. Very few providers yet supply a connection that can reliably stream HD/3D video consistently for hours at a time. They either hit a bandwidth cap and become unwatchable, hit a download cap and cost too much, or just don't have the STABLE speed in the first place to play them. I haven't looked in a while, but i seem to recall HD video streams at 8000kb/s on average? So you would need a 40+MB connection to stream a full blue ray movie, and most blue rays are up to 25gb in size, well beyond the limits of most home broadband at the current time. Plus i wont pay £5 every time i want to watch a movie. I like having a big bookcase full of my movie collection, I'm quite proud of it, especially my complete James Bond Movie set in a special metallic silver briefcase! I must have watched A Team at least a dozen times already, and the Harry Potter/ LOTR movies a dozen times or more each (The early HP's probably 20-30 times!) 1
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Apple, who were one of the key promoters of blue-ray over hd-dvd stating how ace it was, have decided to not even provide basic access to blue-ray drives to push their own wares. I do not believe the crappy apple video store is up to the standard especially with the awful drm. If anything apples solution is worse as you have a platform locking where as blue-ray works with all.... (including lending to mates) The only reason apple were shouting about blue-ray was to naysay MS I suspect who were hd-dvd, once the war was over suddenly its redundant tech when they are peddling their own store... the more you buy from apple the more locked in you are which is what they want. If you could buy blue-ray and use it on mac then thats the best solution as you can then play said movie on your tv without having to buy ANOTHER apple product. Like Rydra says downloads will not be equal in quality etc until we all have massive connections with unlimited bandwidth and thats a simple fact. Game downloads are different as its the same game as on the disc not like online downloads.... Blue-ray films are about 12gb of data including the proper sountrack and in 3d that near enough doubles which is out of reach of so many currently it is silly to think apple is doing this for our good. Apple are evil when it comes to blue-ray as its simply self serving which is apple primary motive for anything always, I would be very surprised to actually believe apple did something for the user that didnt line their pockets directly. The nice thing is use bootcamp with windows and stick a drive in and boom blue-ray..... all apple needs to add is the base support for blue-ray and then tell manufactures to fit their driver (like their usual attitude to all things, do it our way or be quiet) and then your done. Its also laughable apple try to say that they are for pro video producers when they cant even burn a blue-ray film.... FAIL.... for that they have to go to windows.
HarryMonkey Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 I want a P5, from when Rovers were motor cars. I've seen a Rover 2600 SD1, in beautiful condition....I'd have one of those! It's a "D" plate...and my garage reckon that the owner would practically give it away! Just gotta persuade the missus that I need such a beautiful car!! I had the 3.5 V8 version of the SD1 ... a beautifull car. Also had a few P6s as well. That was when Rover made proper cars.
difinity Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Blu-ray is just a storage medium and i'm sure they will suffer the same kind of disc rot that CDs and DVDs suffer from. I know a 8Gb 1080p .mkv file can be downloaded in about 20 minutes. Maybe Mr. Jobs has a point ?
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Blu-ray is just a storage medium and i'm sure they will suffer the same kind of disc rot that CDs and DVDs suffer from. I know a 8Gb 1080p .mkv file can be downloaded in about 20 minutes. Maybe Mr. Jobs has a point ? For the vast majority of uk no it cant and wont be for a while. They are only thinking of setting the min connection speed of 2mb and its going to cost several billion and thats due in 2015? To say there is no need currently is silly in the extreme let alone the fact you cant really download 1080p 7.1 vids legally currently anyway. That mkv probably had a reduced and recompressed soundtrack btw too.
LosOjos Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Blu-ray is just a storage medium and i'm sure they will suffer the same kind of disc rot that CDs and DVDs suffer from. I know a 8Gb 1080p .mkv file can be downloaded in about 20 minutes. Maybe Mr. Jobs has a point ? And considering a lot of broadband providers have a 2gb limit, that's useless to them. The internet infrastructure in this country needs upgrading (which hopefully will be given a boost by BT starting to roll out the fibre optics now) and the ISP's need to get with the times and stop being so restrictive with their services before streaming technology is a viable option. In the meantime, BluRay is the best we have, and even once things have vastly improved in terms of this country's internet services, it still won't take away from the fact that a lot of people (myself included) still like to own a physical object when they have paid their hard earned wages for something.
localzuk Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 For the vast majority of uk no it cant and wont be for a while. They are only thinking of setting the min connection speed of 2mb and its going to cost several billion and thats due in 2015? To say there is no need currently is silly in the extreme let alone the fact you cant really download 1080p 7.1 vids legally currently anyway. That mkv probably had a reduced and recompressed soundtrack btw too. The UK isn't Apple's main market - the US is, and further to that, large cities in the US.
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 The UK isn't Apple's main market - the US is, and further to that, large cities in the US. The US is not much better tbh then UK in a lot of ways. Even then its a weak argument to say we wont plug a driver into the system for external drives because you will never use it currently as you have our amazing poor quality drm video download solution. Am I the only one here who doesnt see the fact apple dont want you buying blu-ray over their locked in store? Even if they dont want to stick the drive in, no support in osx come on no one can honestly say thats in OUR interests and that there is a lack of demand. I have blu-ray and a mac, demand + 1 for me
MK-2 Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 The UK isn't Apple's main market - the US is, and further to that, large cities in the US. but surely thats marketing suicide? to basically say "you can watch our glorious hi-def movies streaming to your tv.......unless you have a download cap or live in the uk, then you're screwed and will be watching 12 hours of buffering" i can understand primary marketing to the US, but to push forward with what will probably be a global surge of apple online stuff, regardless of if people can use them.
LosOjos Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 The UK isn't Apple's main market - the US is, and further to that, large cities in the US. Well according to SpeedTest.net (which I think most will agree is the best know internet speed testing service), the average broadband speed in the US is worse than ours. Speedtest.net - World Results
MK-2 Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 Well according to SpeedTest.net (which I think most will agree is the best know internet speed testing service), the average broadband speed in the US is worse than ours. Speedtest.net - World Results i think what localzuk was aiming at was the bigger cities, where they are probably running fibre to the home or something.
localzuk Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 i think what localzuk was aiming at was the bigger cities, where they are probably running fibre to the home or something. Precisely. FTTH is common now in large cities, companies like AT&T offer fibre services there. Sure, rural places have worse provision but the population lives mostly in urban areas now, both in the USA and the UK (ie. 83% in the USA, 90% in the UK, set to rise to 87% and 92% by 2030). So, with high speed internet provision speeding ahead in urban areas in both countries (and many others too), their marketing plan makes complete sense.
difinity Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 I don't know how much of the country is covered by Virgin's fibre optic network, but with 100Mb coming soon, that will be plenty enough to stream HD.
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 (edited) Precisely. FTTH is common now in large cities, companies like AT&T offer fibre services there. Sure, rural places have worse provision but the population lives mostly in urban areas now, both in the USA and the UK (ie. 83% in the USA, 90% in the UK, set to rise to 87% and 92% by 2030). So, with high speed internet provision speeding ahead in urban areas in both countries (and many others too), their marketing plan makes complete sense. 2030.... 2030.... I would hope super HD was out by then. FTTH is about 3% in the usa they say, USA face the exact same issues we do with rollout. Well when I was out in the states with edugeek meeting real people they all certainly didnt say they had an amazing net connection that allowed everything and anything to come down quickly, quite the opposite. They said if you paid through the teeth in cities you could get faster connections but no, nothing looks amazing for them for the next few years so sadly no their marketing is BS imo. I have seen little to prove that USA has *magical* net connections and plenty against so I am not sure where these statements are based yet. If apple had claimed this in 5 years time, maybe.... Edited January 19, 2011 by ZeroHour
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 I don't know how much of the country is covered by Virgin's fibre optic network, but with 100Mb coming soon, that will be plenty enough to stream HD. Not the majority.... and virgin are really bad when it comes to being an isp. Also the rich will pay for the 100mb but those without big pay wont thus lose doubly.
LosOjos Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 I don't know how much of the country is covered by Virgin's fibre optic network, but with 100Mb coming soon, that will be plenty enough to stream HD. Not sure of a figure but there are a lot of places still not covered (3 out of the 6 homes I've lived in over the past 5 years have had no coverage, and all were different post codes within the west midlands). However, BT are laying fibre optics now too, and competition has a funny way of speeding things up! That's not the only issue though, the fact is that super fast internet connections are simply not affordable to most people yet even if it is available to them, and the fastest packages most people can afford have too many limitations placed on them to be a real option in terms of streaming HD video (a lot don't even give you enough to stream one movie!)
soveryapt Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 I don't know how much of the country is covered by Virgin's fibre optic network, but with 100Mb coming soon, that will be plenty enough to stream HD. The main issue here being the caps they put in place .. I had their 20mb connection at my last property and at the time I wasn't exactly rolling in it (still not, but I'm a little more comfortable now) so went for their basic package .. after 2 weeks of my step kids using the net we were put on their reduction scheme for peak times (the times when the kids needed the net, and me for that matter) which made it reall difficult and then had to buy a higher priced package to get round it all .. If they do the same with their 100mb lines (which I've no doubt they will with all the recent copyright infringmenty things) then will it still be as good to use? I mean, to be honest, at the moment, I'd relish a 10mb line (I'm one of the nice rural types now on a 2mb connection .. and with 6 of us in the house, it's not great, better than the school I'm in where we have a 2mb connection for the school I guess but ... lol) Back to the point in hand, I have to agree with the Blu-Ray thing here .. yes, it's not their main market, but Apple are cutting a lot of things out there .. ok they want to push their own system, but when you can buy a Blu-Ray player for what, £30?, why would you want to spend £99 on Apple TV? If they allow Blu-Ray onto their platform and look to support it, even as an upgrade from the SuperDrive, then surely that would be the better way to go .. And as for cutting out the burning part when they're wanting to push the whole "we are the media choice" ideal .. yes, you can master the movie but send it to the other machines to render and burn .. but then, it's probably cheaper to render it on a PC based machine .. Comes back to the point of "buy what does the job best for you" ..
difinity Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 I'm not rich or on mega pay, i pay about £45 a month for 50Mb, a phone line and tv. I have had three problems with their line 3 times in the 6 or 7 years i've had their service, once was a national outage, once a local node and once when the workmen put a spade through my line when working next door. I've encountered awful customer service from BT on several occasions over the years and I'm not saying that one isp is better than the other, i'm sure we all have good and bad stories to tell. I can't see it a difficult thing for Apple to do to add the drivers and a Blu-ray drive to their range, and it's certainly not a cost issue considering the profit they just made, but how many people watch DVDs or Blu-rays on their laptops or desktops. Surely if people want to watch hi def movies they want to appreciate them on their big HD TVs connected to their AV receivers. p.s. Virgin cap their 10Mb and 20Mb packages, but not their 50Mb or 100Mb packages. Traffic Management | Virgin Media Help & Support - Virgin Media Shop
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 RE: virgin, my comments about them being evil are to do with what aptproductions said really, they give you a high connection speed but nerf you with limits. I am on sky bb myself with 20mb no limits so its not a huge issue for my but my parents in shetland have a 512kb connection... difinity 50mb packages are going to be traffic managed/throttled soon fyi. Also a suprising amount of people go away on a trip and take their laptop with dvd's/blurays to watch while away so they are used and thats before we get to using your computer wired to tv which there are a few of now but I do see it not being the hugest usage of discs but still at least let us buy an external drive to use if apple dont want to supply one. I am not a full apple hater, I just hate a lot of the crud excuses they give which means I dont respect them.
mac_shinobi Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 The main issue here being the caps they put in place .. I had their 20mb connection at my last property and at the time I wasn't exactly rolling in it (still not, but I'm a little more comfortable now) so went for their basic package .. after 2 weeks of my step kids using the net we were put on their reduction scheme for peak times (the times when the kids needed the net, and me for that matter) which made it reall difficult and then had to buy a higher priced package to get round it all .. If they do the same with their 100mb lines (which I've no doubt they will with all the recent copyright infringmenty things) then will it still be as good to use? I mean, to be honest, at the moment, I'd relish a 10mb line (I'm one of the nice rural types now on a 2mb connection .. and with 6 of us in the house, it's not great, better than the school I'm in where we have a 2mb connection for the school I guess but ... lol) Back to the point in hand, I have to agree with the Blu-Ray thing here .. yes, it's not their main market, but Apple are cutting a lot of things out there .. ok they want to push their own system, but when you can buy a Blu-Ray player for what, £30?, why would you want to spend £99 on Apple TV? If they allow Blu-Ray onto their platform and look to support it, even as an upgrade from the SuperDrive, then surely that would be the better way to go .. And as for cutting out the burning part when they're wanting to push the whole "we are the media choice" ideal .. yes, you can master the movie but send it to the other machines to render and burn .. but then, it's probably cheaper to render it on a PC based machine .. Comes back to the point of "buy what does the job best for you" .. The apple tv is because it connects to iTunes and I think other providers so you can rent / buy movies / tv series etc as well as stream music without the setup of a PC / Mac / Media Centre that most people don't want - as per a comment above about people being lazy and they just want it to work - I don't own an apple TV but with HD T.V's and the ability to purchase a DVI to HDMI cable for my apple computer I can watch anything from my mac to my tv - I don't have blu ray on the mac but I do have a PS 3 which is used as a blu ray player ( which solves that issue ) but as far as apple are concerned ref the blu ray thing - they do all there HD stuff through itunes as you download said HD film clip and watch it on your computer or in my case on my Telly as all I have to do is swap to the relevant HDMI channel and I can configure if it is dual screened, cloned or whatever ( I have mine cloned ) Yes I do admit that there high def stuff on iTunes is not high def because when you go above I think 720P it gets pixelated so they need to improve that but again if they improve it then people will be waiting a very long time to download said movie or item and it will take up a lot more space on said persons computer and if you are not great with computers then the size of a movie won't mean anything to you and when your computer soon runs out of space then they will complain. Also with broadband speeds and cap limits, if apple did make them better resolutions with or without codecs then you wouldn't be able to download much anyway so again this knackers up making high def content as you can't download it or can't be bothered to wait due to the max speeds being slow depending on your net connection speed / traffic shaping etc
soveryapt Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 RE: virgin, my comments about them being evil are to do with what aptproductions said really, they give you a high connection speed but nerf you with limits. I am on sky bb myself with 20mb no limits so its not a huge issue for my but my parents in shetland have a 512kb connection... Sky .. bleurgh .. at least Virgin knew how to do an install .. it took me nearly 3 months to get my Sky BB up and running, nearly 2 months of that was trying to persuade Sky that they had activated my phoneline therefore they could go ahead and install the broadband .. I have to say, might only be a 2mb line I'm getting with them though, but the service since all that hassle has been good ..
mac_shinobi Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 (edited) Sky .. bleurgh .. at least Virgin knew how to do an install .. it took me nearly 3 months to get my Sky BB up and running, nearly 2 months of that was trying to persuade Sky that they had activated my phoneline therefore they could go ahead and install the broadband .. I have to say, might only be a 2mb line I'm getting with them though, but the service since all that hassle has been good .. the sam knows website is a load of rubbish - worth while maybe going to the relevant ISP websites and checking your land line phone number or post code to see if they can give you broadband. I am currently with Bethere ( http://www.bethere.co.uk ). As long as you have a bt phone line and I think they ship you out a thompson router as part of the deal ( cant remember all the details, think you have to pay an up front cost not too much though ) and that pays for the router they ship you ( which aint that brilliant ) so use my own netgear router, which I had to configure myself, but if they set up the account correctly which they didn't do with mine but isnt an issue ( ie I wanted it to be dhcp instead of static ip ) then the router configuration should be minimal instead of manually configuring the network info ie ip address, subnet mask, dns servers etc Edited January 19, 2011 by mac_shinobi
ZeroHour Posted January 19, 2011 Posted January 19, 2011 but as far as apple are concerned ref the blu ray thing - they do all there HD stuff through itunes as you download said HD film clip and watch it on your computer or in my case on my Telly as all I have to do is swap to the relevant HDMI channel and I can configure if it is dual screened, cloned or whatever ( I have mine cloned ) Yes I do admit that there high def stuff on iTunes is not high def because when you go above I think 720P it gets pixelated so they need to improve that but again if they improve it then people will be waiting a very long time to download said movie or item and it will take up a lot more space on said persons computer and if you are not great with computers then the size of a movie won't mean anything to you and when your computer soon runs out of space then they will complain. Also with broadband speeds and cap limits, if apple did make them better resolutions with or without codecs then you wouldn't be able to download much anyway so again this knackers up making high def content as you can't download it or can't be bothered to wait due to the max speeds being slow depending on your net connection speed / traffic shaping etc So does that mean your saying you see the point of having blu-ray? connections would be stuffed if they actually tried to deliver full hd = fail. And like you say the apple downloads are heavily compressed with an attempt at 720 but even then its poor. They have NO full 1080p 7.1 surround realHD videos to watch at all. Sky .. bleurgh .. at least Virgin knew how to do an install .. it took me nearly 3 months to get my Sky BB up and running, nearly 2 months of that was trying to persuade Sky that they had activated my phoneline therefore they could go ahead and install the broadband .. I have to say, might only be a 2mb line I'm getting with them though, but the service since all that hassle has been good .. I have heard fresh lines can be pain with sky, I was previous a BT line with another provider (not bt) and moving was really easy and fast.
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