Despite of expectations, Apple, a leading maker of personal computers and portable digital media players, did not announce any system featuring Blu-ray disc drive. Could it mean that the format that is supported by Apple is actually not needed by the company in any way?
Instead, the firm said that HD DVD, which is supported by Microsoft Corp., has lost the format war; currently there is no need to buy a physical disc to watch a high-definition movie since Apple iTunes now offers to rent movies in 720p resolution; as well as announced so-called iPod digital copy, which will be distributed on DVDs released by the 20th Century Fox studio.
“Clearly, Blu-ray won, but in the new world order of instant online movie rentals, in HD, no one will care about what format is where. Funny how fast tech can move,” said Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, in an interview with CNBC.
If Blu-ray is set to take over the world, why not allow customers of Apple to take advantage of the technology early enough, especially given the fact that Blu-ray disc (as well as HD DVD) allows consumers to watch high-definition movies in 1920x1080 resolution with advanced audio, but for $20 - $30 a title? Instead, Apple offers its customers to rent one of 100 high-definition titles in 1280x720 resolution without advanced audio for $3.99 - $4.99 a day.
In addition to movie rentals, users of Apple’s digital media players from now on will be able to take advantage of the so-called iTunes digital copy, which will allow owners of portable multimedia players to enjoy their purchased DVDs on their mobile devices.
The new iTunes Digital Copy provides an easy way to transfer a DVD purchase to a user’s iTunes library. Once a customer buys the DVD, they insert it into their computer, enter a unique code into iTunes and iTunes automatically copies the movie to their iTunes library within minutes. As a result, the content can be viewed on a computer, iPod and Apple TV. Each DVD will only transfer its iTunes Digital Copy to one iTunes library.
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Discussion started: 01/18/08 08:59:30 AM
Latest comment: 01/26/08 03:10:05 AM
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1.
Word is Fox is dumping Blu-Ray and picking up HD-DVD. HD-DVD strikes back!
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Posted by: Insider1
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Date: 01/18/08 08:59:30 AM]
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Don't joke everyone, HD-DVD foolish fanboy! Fox's contract with BluRay last until 2010!
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Posted by: HD-DVD fanboys are all fool
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Date: 01/18/08 07:56:00 PM]
2.
Steve Jobs (and Bill Gates) think that the hi-def war is over, and that formats will become irrelevant. I disagree with this idea, for several reasons. First, many people will not only want to rent videos, but also to own them. Secondly, how long will it take to download several gigabytes of video even over a 5Mbps connection? Such activity on a regular basis can easily go over your ISPs monthly download limit and incur extra fees. This seems like a waste of internet bandwidth for something that you can only use for a short time. Thirdly, blue-ray discs will serve other functions as well, such as archiving and backing up data.
So in short, I believe that this whole plan to implement hi-def digital video downloads over physical media will fall short of the expectations of Microsoft and Apple, and that hi-def media, especially blue-ray, will soar in popularity.
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Posted by: Starman80
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Date: 01/18/08 02:17:04 PM]
3.
Jobs and Gates are right. Who buys a music CD anymore? Digital downloads took over music, and will take over movies.
Of course, it will be a few years. It will be when 5Mbs is considered the new 56k dial-up. It is inevitable.
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Posted by: Insider1
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Date: 01/18/08 04:12:07 PM]
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It should be a long way to go.
Major US broadband connection are still dominated by sub-1Mbps connection, while even 10Mbps line is too slow for downloading a BluRay sized at 50GB!
And the point is you can store 10 of those moives only even with a 500GB hard disk drive!
Also, none of the PC can rival the quality of standalone DVD player, not even standalone BluRay and HD-DVD player! So called PureVideo and AVIVO are stilll looking blur when watching in big screen LCD TVs!
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Posted by: Bandwidth and sotrage are problems
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Date: 01/18/08 08:00:50 PM]
4.
The industry leading provider Adobe support BluRay exporting exclusively in her latest version Premiere CS3, not HD-DVD!
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Posted by: Adobe also support BluRay
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Date: 01/18/08 07:54:38 PM]
5.
Fact of the matter is, those downloadable "HD" movies will be encoded are far lower bit rates than what goes onto Blu-ray or HD-DVD...and Apple is actually stating consumers don't want high audio quality?!?
The MP3 argument doesn't really stack up for video, Blu-ray picture quality will be very noticeably better than Apple HD - the difference between MP3 and CD audio quality is much less...
Downloadable media will only really take off once everyone has either VDSL2 or FTTH and the Internet backbone can handle the huge traffic loads that will be generated...give it at least 10 years...
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Posted by: mixja
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Date: 01/26/08 03:10:05 AM]
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