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Blu-ray, Shmoo-Ray. Am I the only one around here that could care less about it?

S

stever500

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 11, 2009
118
0
Gaithersburg, MD.
Blu-ray in an iMac being a deal breaker for people? I don't get that. For me, I don't have a BluRay player, I will probably never own one, I'm sure. When I want to watch a movie, I usually just go to the theater to see it on a big screen. If I'm home, I rent it "On Demand" from my cable company. If it's not On Demand, I just wait till it is. I don't do Netflix or rent movies through video stores anymore. Too much trouble for me. I LOVE having the on demand cable feature as I don't have to return anything, ever.

So, for me, it's Blu-ray, Shmoo-ray. I could care less about it and am surprised that so many people are so angry that the new iMacs don't have it already in it. I have never watched a movie on a computer and probably never will. I have a TV for that. If I want to watch BluRay, I guess I'll just buy a machine and hook it up to my TV, old school style.

Am I the only one that could care less about Blu-ray? It certainly wouldn't have been a deal breaker in me getting my new iMac! Even with the 27" iMac I just got, it's still way too small for me to enjoy a movie at home. For that, I watch it on our TV. Much more comfortable on the couch in my family room or lying in bed late at night. Sitting in front of my computer would be the very last place I'd want to watch a movie.


To each his own,
Steve R
 
I JUST NOW, posted this over on another thread, and Ill re-preint it here since its a little more pertinent to this thread:

This is the best thing I have seen posted on this site since I joined and made the switch from PC to Mac one week ago. I, for the life of me, cant understand why people want to watch movies on their computer. For me, my Mac is in my "office", its where I do work and surf the net. I also do some Pages and Numbers work on it now. So I wouldnt be watching a movie, regardless of its format, here on this Mac. I would take my happy backside through the door on my right and watch it on my 40 in the bedroom, or oh no! all the way down stairs where I have the blu ray hooked to the big daddy. I dont mean to bash everyone, I understand the Hd camcorder and wanting to rip home videos on blu ray quality, but for the most part that isnt what people have been complaining about it for. Can anyone explain why they want to sit in front of their computer to watch DVD's?
 
I agree...

I rip DVDs and stream them through an AppleTV... Is there even a mac program that will rip Blu-ray discs at the 1080p resolution? How long would that take?

Besides... isn't apple moving away from optical drives and adopting things like flash media / sd card readers instead?
 
I don't own a Blu-ray player or discs at all and don't see the big deal about it. Regular DVDs suit me fine for now, with acceptable sharpness. If I want to watch one, I usually go and sit in front of a TV anyways. Personally, I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of it.
 
Let me have the counterpoint here.

Not a deal breaker by any means.

However, I do take a lot of vacation
camcorder footage and do editing within
iMovie. I would like the ability to burn
those movies to Blu-ray so I can preserve
them in their true HD glory instead of
being downconverted to DVD.
 
NJRonbo said:
Let me have the counterpoint here.

Not a deal breaker by any means.

However, I do take a lot of vacation
camcorder footage and do editing within
iMovie. I would like the ability to burn
those movies to Blu-ray so I can preserve
them in their true HD glory instead of
being downconverted to DVD.
Click to expand...

That is definitely a valid point NJRonbo. It would be a sweet capability. But a lot of people are complaining that they will wait until a blu ray option is available. That doesnt compute on my simplistic CPU. This thing can do SO many things, and people are acting like one of the few things it cant do is such a huge deal. And I think that attitude is off base. Apple could give these people the moon and it wouldnt be enough. They would only say, why wasnt it mars or venus?
 
at2wells,

Can't understand how it can be a deal
breaker for some.

Simply add an external burner once (or if)
OS X supports it.

I am being told you can even open up
the iMac and put in a BD slimdrive yourself.
 
Honestly, I don't care about Blu-Ray.

But wouldn't it be possible if OSX doesn't support Blu Ray burning to externally hook up a Blu Ray burner to iMac, and burn it with BootCamp or VM or whatever it is?
 
I could see why some younger people would want blueray just b/c they likely use an imac for a tv/dvd/computer while at home and in college. However other than that i dont' really understand the appeal that much. as has been noted you can add an external later on.

The real point about this is that apple doesn't want to go blueray for many reasons, but the one which sticks out to me is digital media. Apple has appletv and tons of digital media, and has been rumored to getting a 30/mnth tv service...why in gods name would they invest in blueray if they are putting unknown amount of resources in digital media? especially if some of the people who really want it can get it by buying an external drive in the near future?

The size of hard drives, the resolution of the screen, and the abilities of sites such as hulu and many others, makes me think that apple doesn't believe we'll be using discs within 5 years so why bother including it?
 
NJRonbo said:
However, I do take a lot of vacation camcorder footage and do editing within iMovie. I would like the ability to burn those movies to Blu-ray so I can preserve them in their true HD glory instead of being downconverted to DVD.
Click to expand...

The preservation of those "zeroes and ones" on a recording medium will only last as long as the format survives . . . like cassette tape, floppy discs, zip drives, bernoulli drives, streaming tape, compact disc, dvd, miniDV . . . not to mention all the analog formats like 8 track, compact cassette, betamax, vhs, laserdisc, vhs-c, Hi8

So, if you're going to burn them for "preservation" burning the data to a particular playback format isn't the way to go.

BluRay . . . just another way of selling box sets of movies that we've already bought . . .
 
stever500 said:
Blu-ray in an iMac being a deal breaker for people? I don't get that. For me, I don't have a BluRay player, I will probably never own one, I'm sure. When I want to watch a movie, I usually just go to the theater to see it on a big screen. If I'm home, I rent it "On Demand" from my cable company. If it's not On Demand, I just wait till it is. I don't do Netflix or rent movies through video stores anymore. Too much trouble for me. I LOVE having the on demand cable feature as I don't have to return anything, ever.

So, for me, it's Blu-ray, Shmoo-ray. I could care less about it and am surprised that so many people are so angry that the new iMacs don't have it already in it. I have never watched a movie on a computer and probably never will. I have a TV for that. If I want to watch BluRay, I guess I'll just buy a machine and hook it up to my TV, old school style.

Am I the only one that could care less about Blu-ray? It certainly wouldn't have been a deal breaker in me getting my new iMac! Even with the 27" iMac I just got, it's still way too small for me to enjoy a movie at home. For that, I watch it on our TV. Much more comfortable on the couch in my family room or lying in bed late at night. Sitting in front of my computer would be the very last place I'd want to watch a movie.

To each his own,
Steve R
Click to expand...

You lead a rather dull life :) Just kidding!

I for one am a big HT buff and movie buff. So I definitely invest in a BR library and a nice BR player and HD television for my home theater. However, I would have very little use for buying a computer with a BR drive. I just am not one of those people that would want to watch a movie on my desktop monitor or laptop. So for me Apple does not need to add a BR.
 
It is by no means a deal-breaker for me, but here are some key points from a consumer standpoint:

- The quality of video from streamed, upconverted, and/or overcompressed sources (like cable, DSS, iTunes, and OnDemand) is, in my opinion, flat out bad. Maybe not an issue for everyone, where good enough is (uh...) good enough. But for some of us, it's not acceptable.

- For those of us who have made the switch (I switched to Blu-ray about 2 years ago. Have a pair of 1080p TVs in my house - 52" in the living room and 37" in the bedroom), we don't buy DVDs anymore. And yes, there are occasions where we might want to have a disc playing on our computers. Which leads to...

- With the introduction of the 27" iMac, Apple is making a pretty strong statement about their machines being more than just a computer. For people living in small spaces - dorms, city apartments, etc..., their computers might be their sole entertainment source. My four years in college, a 19" Trinitron CRT monitor (at the time, that was ridiculously huge) was my DVD player, TV, entertainment center all in one. Also, some people might have their Macs in a home office and want to be able to just throw a movie in the background or over lunch or something.

- and of course, the professional reasons like Blu-ray authoring. I'm sure media professionals would like to see the final product on the machine they used to make the product.

I just don't understand this "I don't need it, so no one needs it" mentality that pops up on things like this. If some people want it, why so threatened by giving people choice? Look at matte vs. glossy... the universe didn't explode when Apple decided to offer a matte (sorry... "anti-glare") option on the unibodies. And things that Apple throws into most Macs like Bluetooth and the iSight... I don't think I've used either of those in years but I'm not gonna go around saying they're stupid and Apple should get rid of them because I don't use them.
 
Not a deal breaker for me either.

However, I love high definition on any format. Heck I still have my collection of HD-DVDs! Regular DVD or SD resolution just doesn't cut it for me anymore specially now that I am spoiled. I also record and edit home videos in high def.

Try watching a TV program in 1080i, and watch how standard def commercials spoil the experience the moment they're on.

Whether you like it or not, we are all headed to a high def future.

The only way I can see this being a deal breaker is if you are not fond of external devices and you want a true all-in-one blu-ray playing iMac without the extra cable. Also, why waste the 27" for computing alone. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pop in your blu-ray disc and watch it in glorious high def?

I have an external blu-ray player now and I use it to transfer my Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies to my dedicated external drive for Apple TV viewing in 720p. And yes, I use Windows to do the ripping then Handbrake in OSX for the conversion, a process I hope can be done in a Mac alone soon.

Not a deal breaker, but it still leaves a small dent in my fascination with the best all-in-one computer in the world, the mighty iMac.
 
MTI said:
I don't think there's disagreement about that, but isn't buying digital media on "optical discs" old school as well?
Click to expand...

Not exactly old school at this time. Believe it or not, optical media is still going to be with us for a while still due to the fact that it is the only practical media that can fit that much information on a single disk without sacrificing quality.

Imagine downloading a (complete) blu-ray quality movie? That'll take you forever my friend. Even to this day, Apple Store downloadable hi-def movies aren't offered in their full quality.

Also, imagine Bluray movies sold on USB sticks. They would need to sell you a 50 gig stick for just one movie...imagine how that will cost you.
 
Question...

Can I burn Blu-rays via Windows on a virtual
machine such as Parallels or VMWARE?

If so I will buy an external drive for the iMac
 
May I hijack this thread and ask one
more question?

Will iMovie output to the correct format
that I can copy to Windows and burn to
BD with software such as Roxio?
 
i dont need blue ray , dont know what to use it for ,in a year or two there will be something on the market that will rival "normal" blue ray anyway

i explain why ,blue ray is something nobody realy knows where its going and since blue ray is available its evolving nearly every couple month ,first dual layer then 3 layer then 4 layer disc and they already plan 10 layer discs which could store 250gb on one disc , but first they need to build the players /writers for these discs so you buy your dual layer blue ray now and next year its maybe already absolute stoneage ...as blue ray is not in a final stage , i mean not as far as it would be wise for apple or any pc maker to jump on it and build it in to their new computers as standard , as then you would complain ..why cant it write on 3 layer dis`s or 4 layer or 10 layer
what if next month a company makes a big breakthrough and finds a way of making 50 layer blue ray discs (unlikely but ...)
even if they would build these ten layer blueray players/writers there is still the problem to make them backwards compatible with ordinary dvd`s/cd`s as some allreay available players on the market are unable to read cd`s
which would mean you would need a external drive that can do just that read your old data , so why not keep our normal superdrives and you guys who cant live without blue ray, buy external blue ray players and do what you want with them

just a example i have several hundred musik cd`s in the shelf i certainly dont want to throw them away , and it would be illegal to burn these on blue ray and i dont want to buy a new AIO system and clutter my desk with external drives then
 
Meh, I'm neutral on BluRay. But to not offer it as an option in 2009, well kinda smells funny. ? is Apple buying time until physical media dies out? It it an attempt to push their iTunes model?

On another note, unless you don't care at all, you could care less. You probably meant, "Am i the only one around here who couldn't care less?"

caring.png
 
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