Apple Backs Blu-ray 491
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."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dell (Score:3, Informative)
Apple as an indicator of future dominance. (Score:1, Informative)
Apple's decision to ship USB on the iMac marked the start of USB as a consumer interface.
Ditto for firewire, floppy-less machines.
And what's MS gonna do with HD-DVD? Ship computers with it? Disable Blu-Ray drives? E-THIS-FORMAT-SUCKS: ?
Re:Sucks to be an early adopter (Score:3, Informative)
Re:don't forget the MiniDisc! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The cheap one wins (Score:1, Informative)
I'm sorry, you have a basic fact wrong (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And that is why... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:And that is why... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Matsushita. (Score:2, Informative)
link [jvc-victor.co.jp]
Apple snubbing MPEG4 (Score:3, Informative)
Since when is Apple snubbing, or being snubbed by, MPEG4? [apple.com]
Re:Not really... (Score:2, Informative)
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?
Re:And that is why... (Score:5, Informative)
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 [dvddemystified.com]. That is the first link I found to it, but it technically is the DVD FAQ that every site backs.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:1, Informative)
HD-DVD pretty much has zero advantages at this point.
Re:Not really... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:My Concern Either Way is: (Score:2, Informative)
Despite standards, not all discs are EXACTLY the same size, fit is variable. Ever used a disc stabilizer ring? I did once. Put a stabilized audio disc in my 40x read CD drive, the ring blew apart under centrifugal stress and jammed the drive. Had to dissasemble it to get the disc out. Luckily no damage to the drive, but what a PAIN IN THE ASS. These things use the same sort of plasti-rubber rings to hold them on. I don't trust 'em. Good idea, but execution leaves much to be desired.
There are some "industrial" solutions out there that I have seen marketed to video rental stores. Same basic idea, thin plastic sheet; but these things use adhesive to stick them to the disk at the edges and center. Again, centrifugal force from high-speed drives will stretch the plastic and cause them to blow apart eventualy. If the plastic should actualy be scratched badly enough to tear it, they then disintegrate all over the inside of your drive. I've seen it happen. It's messy. Not to mention the residual adhesive gunk on your disc and the difficulty of putting them on perfectly straight. Even with one of those centering jigs they never quite hit the right place. Then there's always the catch of a label-side scratch, Good-bye media.
I still advocate caddies (or diamond coating *grin*) as the only real solution for people who don't want to bother handling discs with extreme care.
I love my Skip Dr. and wouldn't trade it for a case of disc protectors, but it sure would be nice to just not have to worry.
Re:HD-DVD will win out (Score:3, Informative)
They use Betacam, not Betamax. It's a different format.
Re:Apple as an indicator of future dominance. (Score:3, Informative)
Today, Apple places DVD-RW drives in pro desktops and laptops. I don't know if that helps with +RW disc reading.
Re:Apple as an indicator of future dominance. (Score:1, Informative)
The first DVD-R/RW equipped Mac was the DA 733 G4 about 18 months after the DVD-RAM equipped machines appeared.
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about? MPEG-2 video is usually compressed somewhere between 8:1 and 30:1 [berkeley.edu]. 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.
Supported formats--why not DV? (Score:1, Informative)
Such a shame given a Blu-Ray disc should be able to hold a couple hours of DV video.
Same is true on the other end of the spectrum. If you have low quality MPEG4 files or H.263 files you have to transcode them to MPEG2/WMV/H.264 as well. Again a compression of a compression.
Why can't these video formats specify the cumulative sum of all major codecs invented at the time of the format? Is it really that hard to mandate ffmpeg in the Blu-Ray spec instead of a proprietary Microsoft WMV codec?
Re:Apple as an indicator of future dominance. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple as an indicator of future dominance. (Score:1, Informative)
Full support for + is a recent development in OS + apps, but the drives themselves have been based on +/- mechanisms for some time -- software support of the format was the major hurdle that needed to be overcome.
FWIW, as I recall, +RW had the major drawback of having a very opaque media, moreso than -RW, which itself is much darker than +R/-R. That low of a reflection caused a lot of drives to not work with it.