HD DVD & Apple

[Dave the Great]

I know that Apple has announced their support of blu-ray, but will you still be able to make use of HD DVD?

Toshiba I guess has a new laptop coming out this month (or maybe it has already been released) that has an HD DVD drive in it. I can only assume that stand-alone HD drives for computers will soon follow (again, if they are not already out there).

So, if one was to get a HD DVD drive would you be able to use it in OS X?

Also, I know that a bunch of HD DVD movies are being released this month. If you do have a player, would you be able to play them back on your Mac?

I know that the HD DVD spec supports MPEG-2 HD, H.264, and VC-1. Do the HD DVD movies that you buy, include all of these on one disk? Or do you specifically have to look for a h.264 version? Will VC-1 be supported on a Mac?

Thanks!!

 

[TheMonarch]

I wouldn't worry too much about what codec is being used. Its not meant to concern the general public. If the movie is up to the HD DVD spec, it will play.


As for that drive working in OSX, I don't know

 

[Dave the Great]

I wouldn't worry too much about what codec is being used. ...)

I was just concerned because VC-1 is the Microsoft codec and if Apple doesn't fully support HD DVD, then disks with VC-1, I would assume, will not be playable with Macs. If that is the case, then you would have to look for disks encoded with MPEG-2 or H.264 for playback on a Mac.

Thanks for your super quick reply!!

 

[badmofo9000]

I may be totally off, but wasnt there something about HD-DVD and BlueRay not playing back on Mac/PC if the video card did not comply with certain copy protection schemes. I read somewhere, I don't remember where, that no video cards on the market currently support this "feature". I also read that if the monitor doesnt support this "feature" the DVD will only play at half of the native resolution. And that there are very very few monitors on the market with this feature.

Is any of this accurate???

 

[yoda13]

I have absolutely no idea if any of that is accurate, but if it is, that would really suck.

 

[LethalWolfe]

I may be totally off, but wasnt there something about HD-DVD and BlueRay not playing back on Mac/PC if the video card did not comply with certain copy protection schemes. I read somewhere, I don't remember where, that no video cards on the market currently support this "feature". I also read that if the monitor doesnt support this "feature" the DVD will only play at half of the native resolution. And that there are very very few monitors on the market with this feature.

Is any of this accurate???

That is correct. There are very few HDCP compliant computer monitors on the market, and there are only some HDCP compliant, OEM video cards (no retail cards are HDCP compliant yet) available right now. HDCP protected material will either play back at standard def or not at all (depending on how the material has been protected) if you don't have an HDCP compliant player (or video card in the case of computers) and a HDCP compliant monitor.

To the OP I can't imagine any company making a non-HD/Blu-ray compliant HD/Blu-ray drive. It just wouldn't make sense, IMO.


Lethal

 

[mrgreen4242]

That is correct. There are very few HDCP compliant computer monitors on the market, and there are only some HDCP compliant, OEM video cards (no retail cards are HDCP compliant yet) available right now. HDCP protected material will either play back at standard def or not at all (depending on how the material has been protected) if you don't have an HDCP compliant player (or video card in the case of computers) and a HDCP compliant monitor.

To the OP I can't imagine any company making a non-HD/Blu-ray compliant HD/Blu-ray drive. It just wouldn't make sense, IMO.


Lethal

Yup, and this is why the HD DVD/BluRay market will fail to get off the ground entirely. If they had spent some time and effort getting everyones hardware "up to spec" before launch it may have worked, but now...

This is why Apple needs to figure out a way to get HD movies through iTMS. People would like that, I think, and it may let them become the "standard" that the other 2 formats have to live up to.

 

[MisterMe]

Yup, and this is why the HD DVD/BluRay market will fail to get off the ground entirely. If they had spent some time and effort getting everyones hardware "up to spec" before launch it may have worked, but now...

Apple's primary interest in Blu-ray is for data storage. Video content is a consideration, but not the primary one.

This is why Apple needs to figure out a way to get HD movies through iTMS. People would like that, I think, and it may let them become the "standard" that the other 2 formats have to live up to.

Earth to mrgreen4242, HD requires massive bandwidth that is not available to all but a sliver of Internet users. So far, I have downloaded only one 20 minute video from iTMS. At 320 x 208 pixels, 29.97 fps, this MPEG-4 file comes in at 94 MB. DVD quality would bump it to about 400 MB. The same video in HD would be about 1.6 GB. A two-hour HD movie would come in at about 6-7 GB. Assuming that a switch to h.264 would lower the file size to 2 GB or so, we are still talking about HUGE files. The upshot is that the iTMS is a long way from supporting files of this size. Consumers are a long way from having the infrastructure to handle HD over the 'net.

 

[Morn]

ADSL can handle 6-7GB files, they'll get to your computer faster than the post man at least, transfer time of only 12 hours on only a 1.5mbit DSL link. I think the consumers are ready, are there any datacentres that would be ready though? Cost of the bandwidth would unfortunately push up the cost of the purchase that could kill the whole thing.... But I certainly don't think it's anything on the consumer side that is the obstacle there are plenty of people with broadband who'd be willing to download HD.

 

[dejo]

ADSL can handle 6-7GB files, they'll get to your computer faster than the post man at least.

From a previous post of mine:

I've played with the numbers and it would take, on average, 8 hours to download a typical 1080p 120-min film using my routinely 300KB/s high-speed internet connection.

Faster than the postman? Sure. Acceptable to the average consumer? Nope.

 

[Will_reed]

hd-dvd is pretty much DOA.

 

[Morn]

I think plenty of consumers would be willing to wait 8 hours for the ablity to have HD on demand. Why the popularity of bit torrent should demonstrate that. 8 hours is no big deal, the computer will just sit there downloading while you get on with your day, I don't see why consumers can't deal with that.

 

[dejo]

I think plenty of consumers would be willing to wait 8 hours for the ablity to have HD on demand. Why the popularity of bit torrent should demonstrate that.

Having to wait 8 hours is not exactly "on demand", is it? The good news is that thanks to streaming technology we can probably start watching that HD content long before 8 hours is up. If only it could guarantee no hiccups.

 

[exeterbohemian]

format wars are inherent in the industry... just look at what happened when dvd burners started to appear on the market. we had dvd-r, dvd-rw, dvd+r, dvd+rw, dvd-ram, then dual-layer, etc. (tell me if i'm forgetting any...). and yet now, it has become wholly inconsequential. i mean, most burners on the market will support virtually all of these formats (excluding dl, since it's relatively new). so frankly, i wouldn't worry about it. i put off buying a dvd burner for the longest time because of stupid format wars. by the time i got my powerbook the support was universal. so what's the bottom line? wait. whatever is going on in the industry, chances are pretty good apple will (eventually) support it.