Optical Drives Are Holding Us Back - Page 3

OK, LaoChe, it seems like you desperately needing a win in this argument. I'll bow out and let you stream your blu-ray physical disc based data.

It's not about me "winning" an argument. I play physical discs in my BD standalone player just like everyone does. But how does Apple's comment change that or potentially threaten my current setup? Are you upset that you won't be able to play a BD on your tablet or smartphone in the future? Or maybe its because you will no longer be able to gather the family and huddle around your big 21-27" iMac screen to watch BD movies with its AWESOME built-in sound system to REALLY make that BD audio shine.

Seriously people, I fail to see the problem here.

Now, if the owners of Oppo or the president of Sony made that same comment, I'd be MUCH more concerned.
Edited by LaoChe - 10/29/12 at 8:35pm

double post.

Studios aren't telling me how I'll watch their movies. I can watch it in a theater, on a DVD, on a Blu-ray, or stream it. The latter not even being an option at this point though. I can even buy a copy to keep and watch as many times as I want for one price.

As for supporting Blu-ray, unfortunately sometimes things are what they are. I would have prefered HD DVD over Blu-ray but this time Sony won out with a lesser quality format like VHS did over Sony's Betamax years ago. So Blu-ray happens to be the best and only viable option available.
Edited by Ishniknork - 10/29/12 at 10:01pm

ROFL! That is truly funny LaoChe, really, I mean it. Not trying to argue the point and I agree, I don't see a problem here. Apple can delete physical drives from their stuff all they want, it won't affect me at all. Also agree about your last statement. That would be

Furthermore, I'm sure one day after I'm dead and gone everything will be instantly streamed to gorgeous full-wall screens in fantastic futuristic homes controlled by voice commands and motion sensors. But for now this is what we got.

+1 Exactly

This is obviously Apple spin to justify why iTunes should be the only source for media.

Some people here are extolling the virtues of downloading a 50GB file into your, currently at most, 3TB hard drive. But what are you doing for back-up? Hopefully, you have at least a RAID 10, or a RAID 6, on a self-reparable system, and ideally off-site backups -- all of a sudden, the oft-cited "cheap" disc space isn't so cheap anymore. You have at least 2 parity drives and additional backups for every collection. And if your system, or a hard drive, crashes, you're looking at a potentially $150 fix to replace a hard drive, or more if it's a RAID card or an SAS multiplier that failed. If you thought that shiny DROBOS next to your shiny Mac was all you needed, think again.

Currently, the only cost-effective alternative to optical discs are USB flash drives, and I would much rather keep an optical disc as a back-up solution than store anything in flash drives that a magnetic field could easily corrupt. A replicated blu-ray disc could last decades if it wasn't mishandled

Simple and true.

I have limited internet (1GB data plan). Streaming is impossible. Bluray is my only choice for HD video.

Oh please......spare me this purist nonsense, will you!
If you can tell me of a format that can deliver the same audio and video quality as a BD disk please do so. I am all for any other method of delivering content besides a BD disk, if that medium can achieve the same end results. The reason disks still exist, is that nothing else comes close. That I know of !!

Paul

Never been overly fond of Apple, either... I dunno, I like having them nice (albeit space-taking) blue (or white) plastic BD cases with cover art and sometimes ingenious ways of holding extra discs or lenticular slipcases or shiny rainbow cardboard packaging or steelbook presentations etc etc. I like the transparent-shiny look and feel of a Blu-ray disc itself. I definitely would not want Blu-ray to die anytime soon, and if and when it does come to that, I'll still want a decent player to be able to watch them regardless of boot-time etc. Same goes for my DVDs and CDs. Also, don't know if anyone's mentioned this already, but I don't think any other media could show 3D as well as a BD can? Am I mistaken here? And of course, those Blu-ray 3D packaging presentations I AM particularly fond of.

No format or electronic device, in these times that change so rapidly, will be here to stay. Time marches on, materials deteriorate, inovation always increasing. So much for the hardware. I think they call it planned obsolecence!
Internet in NA is one of the slowest in the world! Even some Third World Countries have faster Internets!
Magnetic media - go back to line 1 - a good electromagnetic burst would wipe out anything in a magnetic medium! (Dec 21, 2012 anyone?)
Check the ratings for Apple these days - they're on the decllne - while Google's Android is the current up and up - for so long, before being replaced.
Can't believe a person would be so lazy, that it bugs them to get up and insert or remove a disc. No wonder the over all population is getting to be over weight!
For now, give me a BD - who's to say I need the latest, greatest, when 6 months from now, I can purchase it for half price or less! After all, if you haven't seen it before, then it's a New Movie. Like others before me have said - just my 2 cents worth!

Except a lot of rental discs now have crippled HD Audio to force a buy or..

I'm from Canada and I can safely say the infrastructure necessary to download blu-ray size files on a weekly basis is simply non-existent, and will remain that way for at least decade, by which time 4K blu-rays will create the same problem for the upgraded hardware. Optical drives are here to stay forever.

"Optical Drives Are Holding Us Back"...? From what?

It is evident from many of the posts on this thread, that members are having difficulty seperating optical disc for PCs and optical disc for home entertainment.

EDITED: removed word "portable" in front of PCs
Edited by Lee Stewart - 10/30/12 at 2:21pm

the imac is a desktop i would not classify it as a portable PC, its kinda where this whole thing started, its understandable in an ultraportable laptop but for a desktop is pretty dumb IMO. FWIW ive burned 15 disks in the past month, and watched a BR on my comp last night

am I experiencing Deja vu, or did some one change the name of the DVD is dying thread, I'm confused.

My two cents, again Blu Ray, HD DVD, vhs, call it what you want, its a means of delivery, and frankly, does it matter how the content is delivered, SD Card, USB Flash Drive, ESP, aliens, downloaded, of course we'll need to get business accounts with our ISPs. As long as the quality we are accustom to seeing from a BD, with the necessary audio tracks, and we have a file that we can keep and watch anytime we choose, and the delivery method is not cost prohibitive, it doesn't really matter how the content is delivered in my book. If some one is not getting paid a royalty to build a BD player, some one else is getting paying a royalty to make the software or media player that can play the media and maintain DRM.

I agree with those that like BD, its the preferred choice for delivery of high bit rate AV content at this current point in time, and I agree with Lee if I can save a trip to the store and down load a file of the same quality, that I can physically keep on my hard drive, I'm all good with that, but lets not get downloading confused with streaming whic in this day and age is a completely different delivery means all together, at least for now.

And regarding Apple, some one mentioned it in another forum, yes they are a business, and they are also a religion. "That's all I got to say about that"
Edited by dbailey75 - 10/30/12 at 1:55pm

Still, a $2 rental with beeter PQ and AQ than $4 streaming rental.

i guess i missed the point here; it seems to me apple wants to focus on thier core demographic-the people who are content with convenience and not quality-i mean how can anyone who would watch a movie or tv show on a phone or a ipad care are quality? the people on this forum as i see it are only concerned about quality-where else would someone who only makes 75k a year spend 100k to watch a movie but here -i think we should all accept this as him blowing smoke and trying to be Jobs. and as the other poster said- if sony or oppo or pioneer said this i might be worried

My 2 cents: Optical drives will become obsolete about the time 100Mbps Internet service (or better) is common and cheap. In others words, no time soon.

Apple certainly has a vested interest in selling through iTunes,

This being said, any optical drive goes in the opposite direction that they want to go as far as form factor. Current generation Apple laptops are not thick enough to accommodate an Ethernet port, let alone an optical drive! And those laptops are fantastic, partly because they can be so light and thin.

One can get an USB BD reader and plug it info a Mac. Of course there is no easy way to play it and that goes back to the costs of licensing and size of market. Why do you think that for the longest time, DVD software was added by the PC OEMs? Because the cost of license fees was shifted to them and not the OS maker.

I am not a total purist so I am okay re-encoding a 25 Gb BD in a 10 Gb mkv/mp4 that I play off a disk. I understand not everybody is like this. I guess that, equipped with a BD writer one could make backup copies that are just the main title and play them off that backup on a Mac... or just get a PC for media.

I disagree, provided that your logic for that is that we'll be able to stream high bandwidth content as if it were a YouTube video. By the time those sorts of speeds are commonplace (i.e., I will be paying the same amount for 100Mbps as I currently pay for 25), we will have even higher bandwidth content to stream and it will still get bogged down. BD's already play at 35Mbps+. I wouldn't be surprised to see that jump to 80+ by the time we get cheap 100Mbps down.

But, either way, we don't get anything soon.

If anything, USB Thumb drives could eventually replace optical drives for movies.

The real thing I hate about itunes, steam, impulse, etc. etc. over physical media is that it is completely not transferable to other people. For instance, if I want to lend a blu-ray to my neighbor (we are both HT enthusiasts) I can do it no problem. If I die tomorrow, my wife and kids can take solace in the fact that they inherit my Blu-Ray collection no problems whatsoever.

Somebody ask Phil Schiller what their policy of itunes is in regards to lending / inheritance? Can my wife inherit my itunes account? Can I lend movies via itunes to friends?

We all know the answers to these questions, including and especially Phil Schiller.