Apple TV (take 3) needs to include blu-ray with SD digital download

[Pandaboots]

Lots of people here have shown their extensive libraries of movies and T.V. shows and huge amounts of backup storage solutions. It's my belief that everyone probably really has a top 50 to top 100 favorite all time movies that you can watch over and over again and never get tired of 'em and probably 5 to 10 T.V. shows they really like enough to want to collect the seasons and episodes. Of course those numbers will and do grow as time goes by. I think the solution lies in blu-ray to ease the storage problem and ability to have digital content for the average person.

Think of Blu-Ray as 50gb raid drives (or drobo) that backs up all your content in perfect uncompressed format. Now based on my assumed numbers above for movies and T.V. shows, how many blu-ray discs would have to be physically stored? Not as many as DVD's because with the storage capacity, trilogies could be on 1 disc, entire series of T.V. shows could be on 1 disc...plus the cases are a bit thinner too (you get my point, much less physical storage space).

So if TV included a blu-ray drive, it might become as a popluar as the iPhone. But here's the deal clincher - each movie or T.V. season you buy on blu-ray would include a SD digital download for use with the iPods and iPhones and TV if so inclined. This would catapult blu-ray into the now, would bring the TV out of hobby status and solve our handbraking and storage dilemmas all at the same time...Of course Apple and Hollywood would have to work out some revenue sharing schemes and how many times content could be re-downloaded in x period of time in case of a hard drive failure, but I'd pay a few bucks more knowing I was getting both a blu-ray for my theater and a digital copy for my iPod/iPhone with simple backup. And yes, you would still have to physically insert the blu-ray for top quality 1080p.

Given the storage requirements and lack of bandwidth to feasibly download HD in a reasonable amount of time, I can think of no better solution for the HD/iPod era we live in.

Share your thoughts please....

 

[tronic72]

There's as much chance of Apple including a Blue-Ray drive as a cappuccino maker in the next Apple TV

The reasons this will NEVER happen are:

1. Cost. The Apple TV will double in cost. Many say the current Apple TV is currently to expensive. Remember only the US had the recent drop in price. No-one will pay $1000 for an Apple TV with a Blue-Ray Player.

2. What could Apple possibly gain from putting the Blue-Ray Player in the Apple TV? Those that want HD buy a PS3 or a stand alone player. They would have to totally redesign the product for no gain.

3. Many IT futurists are already signalling the end of optical media. Why would Apple risk so much on a technology that "could" be on the way out, when they already have a great product that ties in beautifully with their current business model. The reason Apple haven't even bothered adding Blue-Ray to their Macs, let alone the Apple TV is Blue-Ray isn't required by the majority of users.

Why don't you post for future Macs to include Blue-Ray, instead of the Apple TV - there's a much better chance of it happening.

my 2c

Edit: In regards to your comments on storage. It's not really relevant due to the massive price drops on HD storage recently. You can buy 1 TB of storage for about $200 AU. That's approximately 500 movies!!! Granted that's not HD, but even if you allowed 10Gb that's still 100 hundred movies! I single Blue-Disk is approximately $20. If you copied each movie to a Blue-Ray player , you'd be looking at $2000 in Blue_Ray media compared to $200 in HD media.

 

[NotFound]

Yeah, blu ray would kind of take away from their whole idea of over the air sync with itunes on your mac

 

[zedsdead]

Blu-Ray isn't even in the Mac Pro yet. It ain't coming to the Apple TV for a long time, if ever. Not that I wouldn't welcome it, since I could get rid of my DVD player then, but Apple is very focused on downloads.

The biggest thing the Apple TV needs is a DVR. That I think will be in the first actually revision of the product since Take 2 was only a software upgrade.

 

[minik]

Personally, I do not want Apple offers any optical drive inside the Apple TV. Since the Apple TV is a consumer device for typical joe and jane, I doubt that Apple wants to mix it with Blu-Ray or any other optical drive. For geeks, it would be nice for Apple to open up the USB port right out of the box.

 

[kolax]

Whole point in Apple TV is you don't have loads of discs. Blu-Ray would be pointless.

What I'd want in Take 3 is a hard drive of a reasonable size (1TB and 2TB models) with a built in TV Tuner, so you can actually record TV Shows.

That is all for me.

 

[dbwie]

Blu-Ray

There's as much chance of Apple including a Blue-Ray drive as a cappuccino maker in the next Apple TV

The reasons this will NEVER happen are:

1. Cost. The Apple TV will double in cost. Many say the current Apple TV is currently to expensive. Remember only the US had the recent drop in price. No-one will pay $1000 for an Apple TV with a Blue-Ray Player.

2. What could Apple possibly gain from putting the Blue-Ray Player in the Apple TV? Those that want HD buy a PS3 or a stand alone player. They would have to totally redesign the product for no gain.

3. Many IT futurists are already signalling the end of optical media. Why would Apple risk so much on a technology that "could" be on the way out, when they already have a great product that ties in beautifully with their current business model. The reason Apple haven't even bothered adding Blue-Ray to their Macs, let alone the Apple TV is Blue-Ray isn't required by the majority of users.

Why don't you post for future Macs to include Blue-Ray, instead of the Apple TV - there's a much better chance of it happening.

my 2c

Edit: In regards to your comments on storage. It's not really relevant due to the massive price drops on HD storage recently. You can buy 1 TB of storage for about $200 AU. That's approximately 500 movies!!! Granted that's not HD, but even if you allowed 10Gb that's still 100 hundred movies! I single Blue-Disk is approximately $20. If you copied each movie to a Blue-Ray player , you'd be looking at $2000 in Blue_Ray media compared to $200 in HD media.

The only reason I would want an optical drive (Blu-Ray or Superdrive) integrated into an AppleTV is so I won't ever need to buy a computer with such a drive. Remember that Apple now has DVD/CD sharing over a network so those with MacBook Air laptops can install software via CD. This same sharing technology can be deployed for an AppleTV with optical drive. I might pay more for an AppleTV with optical drive, but that drive could then be removed (and they could just offer the external USB superdrive) from all Macs going forward. Large software packages are still distributed on installer CDs and (in apple's case) DVDs, so the optical disc still has some life for a few more years.

 

[26139]

Yep

No blu ray, ever! I like Apple's somewhat of an insinuation that optical media is dead and that downloading is the future. I hate carrying around and waste space with stacks of DVDs and with AppleTV, I don't have to do that anymore.

I'd love a TV tuner on my AppleTV, in addition to more storage space, but including a blu ray player would feel like backwards progress.

Not sure what the huge deal is about blu ray. It's nowhere near the advance that vhs to dvd was. Sure, pic quality is up, but not many of us have 50", 1080p TVs that are actually able to see the difference. I'm watching LOTR on my 32" LCD Phillips from my video iPod (so it's 640x480, or right around there) and it looks great. I'd much rather watch it like this than lug around all three blu ray discs.

 

[minik]

No blu ray, ever! I like Apple's somewhat of an insinuation that optical media is dead and that downloading is the future. I hate carrying around and waste space with stacks of DVDs and with AppleTV, I don't have to do that anymore.

I'd love a TV tuner on my AppleTV, in addition to more storage space, but including a blu ray player would feel like backwards progress.

Not sure what the huge deal is about blu ray. It's nowhere near the advance that vhs to dvd was. Sure, pic quality is up, but not many of us have 50", 1080p TVs that are actually able to see the difference. I'm watching LOTR on my 32" LCD Phillips from my video iPod (so it's 640x480, or right around there) and it looks great. I'd much rather watch it like this than lug around all three blu ray discs.

I have an Apple TV and Playstation 3. Movie on Blu-ray disc is definitely better than the movie file from the iTunes Movie Store. Digital delivery bugs me since I cannot get a hold of the extra content, that's the main advantage of buying a Blu-ray disc/DVD.

I don't understand why you knock down the Blu-ray disc format.

 

[26139]

yep

I have an Apple TV and Playstation 3. Movie on Blu-ray disc is definitely better than the movie file from the iTunes Movie Store. Digital delivery bugs me since I cannot get a hold of the extra content, that's the main advantage of buying a Blu-ray disc/DVD.

I don't understand why you knock down the Blu-ray disc format.

I'm knocking Blu-ray because I don't see it's advantages when compared to DVD quality footage that is downloadable. Sure, they are better than iTunes movies when it comes to picture quality, but my movie watching time isn't negatively affected by that, nor would I think most other's is.

There comes a time when picture quality is good enough and it's better to focus on other forms of delivery. I can't wait for the days when we get 1080p movies via download, but for now, I'll take a hard drive full of 720p movies versus stacks and stacks of Blu-ray discs any day.

 

[tronic72]

I'm knocking Blu-ray because I don't see it's advantages when compared to DVD quality footage that is downloadable. Sure, they are better than iTunes movies when it comes to picture quality, but my movie watching time isn't negatively affected by that, nor would I think most other's is.

There comes a time when picture quality is good enough and it's better to focus on other forms of delivery. I can't wait for the days when we get 1080p movies via download, but for now, I'll take a hard drive full of 720p movies versus stacks and stacks of Blu-ray discs any day.

I thought I'd put my 2 cents in here.

Personally, I don't see the end of optical media any time soon. And this is coming from someone who has all their media on hard drive. Programs, Games and "Personal Backup" are a few of the current items that rely almost exclusively on Optical media.

If I had a 50" or larger TV. I'd be definitely going down the Blue-Ray Rd. Blue-Ray is brilliant on a Large HD screen but I think the reason many people don't think much of Blue-Ray is because on a 42" or less TV, there isn't really any noticeable visual difference.

The problem with Blue-Ray is there are still some major obstacles stopping the majority of the population jumping on board.
These are:
• Cost of both the media & players
• Lack of content

Case in point; we recently got a 12 page brochure from a large Australian Chain Store called "Big W". The brochure had literally hundreds of DVD titles and not a single Blue-Ray title, NOT ONE!

If there was heaps of content out there and players where reasonably priced, Blue-Ray would take over in 12 months. The ball is in Sony's court and they could easily do it but time will tell if they do. If it doesn't happen in the next 12-18 months, it won't, and I think we will see Blue-Ray die a fast and painful death. It would be ironic to see Sony win the HD format "battle" but loose the war.

My 2c

 

[Not FSJ]

Until a US administration makes high speed bandwidth a national priority at an affordable price country wide, optical media will remain a requirement.

 

[Pandaboots]

I can't wait for the days when we get 1080p movies via download, but for now, I'll take a hard drive full of 720p movies versus stacks and stacks of Blu-ray discs any day.

Last time I checked, there was no legal way to download 720p movies to own and really only one easy way for the average consumer to get downloads - TV.

The drawback is purchased movies in iTunes have no true surround sound and are at or below DVD quality. So my position was for Apple to embrace Blu-Ray as this would reduce clutter from storage of actual discs due to their being able to hold so much info (e.g. complete movie trilogies, possibly all seasons of most TV shows) and integrate a digital copy via either download or "offload" from the blu-ray disc to be used with the iPods. This in turn would solve issues with hard drive back ups too.

You've got to think in terms of the average consumer. Sure we "geeks" want all digital media stored on our computers, and we know about handbrake and to a more extreme extent P2P stuff, but think of your friend or parent or relative who doesn't quite get technology. There has to be a better solution to make HD digital media as easy as buying a dvd player and a dvd and pressing play. Apple's on the right track with the TV, but doing away with physical media for the sake of "coolness" makes no sense when the replacement is of less quality than a simple DVD (this is both in resolution and sound).

This would be a stepping stone until actual 1080p downloads are viable for all consumers which is many years away at the very least.

 

[tronic72]

Until a US administration makes high speed bandwidth a national priority at an affordable price country wide, optical media will remain a requirement.

Spot on!

Online HD media is simply not realistic given the current Internets Infrastructure limitations.

The only realistic, current method of HD Media distribution is Blue-Ray