Why The Blu-Ray Rumors Make No Sense
4:29 pm, August 9th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Apple is rumored to be adding Blu-Ray to the iTunes, but why would it undercut its brand new online HD rental service?
New rumors this weekend suggest that Blu-Ray may finally be coming to the Mac. But while Blu-Ray is high on many people’s wish list, the rumors just don’t make sense.
Citing a “pretty reliable source,” Boy Genius Report says Blu-Ray is coming to iTunes 9, maybe as soon as September. The rumor jibes with a particularly vague story on AppleInsider suggesting that new iMacs will get new features (yeah, it’s almost sounds like self-parody), possibly Blu-Ray.
But although Blu-Ray format is gaining popularity, it’s unlikely to come to the Mac, ever. Here’s why:
HD Movies on iTunes: Apple just added HD movie rentals to the iTunes online store in March. Why would Apple undercut its new service with Blu-Ray?
It’s a Bag of Hurt: Even though Apple is a long-standing member of the Blu-Ray association, Blu-Ray licensing is still expensive. Last year Steve Jobs called Blu-Ray licensing a “bag of hurt” and explained: “The licensing is so complex. We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the cost of the drives.”
Blu-Ray Still Pricey: Blu-Ray hardware is still expensive. Despite falling prices, Blu-Ray players still cost about $200. Many analysts think Blu-Ray won’t really take off until players are $100 or less.
Solid State Is The Future: Optical media is dying. Apple’s already dropped CD/DVD from the MacBook Air, just like it dropped the floppy drive from the iMac in 1998. It’s a sign of things to come. Witness the addition of an SD Card slot to the new MacBook Pro 13-inch. Solid state media like SD Cards will replace spinning optical disks; and probably quicker than we expect, given the fast-falling prices of flash memory chips.
Some movie studios are already starting to ship movies on solid state memory cards. In Japan, Walt Disney is offering National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean on microSD drives (It’s probably unrelated, but Jobs sits on Disney’s board). In the U.S., a pair of companies is preparing to release movies on USB memory sticks.
The H.264 codec developed by Apple that underlies MPEG-4 is becoming standard for compressing online video. It’s also a good format for compressing HD movies for SD cards. If Apple is going to support physical media, it’s more likely to be memory cards than spinning disks.
UPDATE: Toshiba said on Monday it will be making Blu-Ray players and adding Blu-Ray drives to its PCs. Toshiba’s HD-DVD, of course, lost the HD format battle against Sony’s and Panasonic’s Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray market is too lucrative to pass up and PC makers are steadily replacing standard DVD drives with Blu-Ray drives, according to the New York Times. Whatever, I still don’t think Apple will add Blu-Ray.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, Rumors, iTunes | Comment on this article
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Thanks for being the voice of reason on this. There is NO reason for Apple to jump on the Blu-Ray band wagon at this time. I’d rather see a Mac with NO optical drive and the option of an extra HD before seeing Blu-Ray.
Hike Every Day, on August 9th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. My counter-argument:
1. iTunes: while a key part of Apple’s revenue strategy, is not going to make the decisions for the computing group forever. People still use CD, DVD, and yes, Blu-Ray. Other manufacturers will support them, Apple will too.
2. It’s a Bag of Hurt: Licensing? Really? See #1, iTunes. They negotiated HD DOWNLOADS. Maybe you are underestimating Apple’s “Bag of Hurt Tolerance”
3. Price: hey, its Apple. Also, I’m seeing $9 Blu-Ray specials in stores. That’s the magic breakthrough point to me… when you can impulse buy crappy movies in the checkout line.
4. Solid state: Hypothetical question… which seems more unlikely: Apple replaces superdrives with blu-ray superdrives, or Apple announces that it is removing all optical media from it’s computers from now on. Thought so.
Anyway… I have moved to all-downloads, so I don’t care that much. But I side more with this rumor than against it. I want 25GB backups!
Marco, on August 9th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Walmart is selling a Bluray player for $98 (stores only) so the sub-$100 player is here now. Not a bad machine apparently: http://twurl.nl/u3kwib
Bozo, on August 9th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
i cannot see the added value of such a drive. in the past years i have not even bought one disc with music or movie. i want it all digital. (yep, i have it all back upped in case of).
mark my words: airlines will go wireless in planes too. saves them putting screens in chairs and people can pay for the downloads that they watch (extra revenue)
mark, on August 9th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Asda (Wal Mart) are selling a £60/70 Blu-Ray player as are other retailers.
Liam, on August 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I’m not quite sure I understand what “Blue-Ray” on iTunes even means. iTunes isn’t even a DVD player. That’s a totally different application.
What would iTunes let you do with Blue-Ray? Press play, pause it?
I think the original rumor confused Mac support for iTunes support.
Andrew Mayne, on August 9th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
AppleInsider, they were reporting for 6 months in 2007 that the Mac mini was being discontinued.
Also note that blueray discs are silly expensive at a $29.99 new release price.
Marco, you might want to take a closer look at those $9 specials. Most likely they are just standard def churned out on blueray. Blueray doesn’t mean it contains HD.
MacRat, on August 9th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
i have the same confusion as Andrew. unless they are planning to push the functions of the DVD Player app into itunes, the whole thing makes little sense.
where’s my thoughts on what the rumors might really mean
1. blu-ray drives to play discs now that the process and fees are hurting a bit less
2. blu-ray burners
3. both, but only as an option to custom order and/or only on the mac pro and highest imac model
4. the talk of a redesign could be to move to desktop processors, solid state drives as an option (again perhaps only on the high end) or bigger drives
5. re: itunes, perhaps it’s not ‘blu-ray’ but rather 1080 files. could it be that Apple is going to experiment with having high def (720) and high high def (1080) on some movies to see what sells. perhaps only on the apple tv like they did the first time around. heck maybe there’s a new flavor of h.264 coming out that would make 1080 files not monsterous huge and make this a practical notion
Lucas, on August 9th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I don’t believe that because apple has stated in the “About iTunes” section that of iTunes (duh). That it has included blu-ray support and Final Cut Studio is able to now write blu-ray discs. Also they state that iTunes 9 will come out in SEPTEMBER when Snow Leopard will be released (when the new ipods will day bu). So snow leopard will probably incorporate blu-ray into its macs (but I doubt that apple will put blu-ray into there macs as a standard option).
Andrew, on August 9th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I also believe that there was no need for the dvd app if they intergrated the same functionality into iTunes or Quicktime. And plus this will be the first time that Steve Jobs spoke at a Keynote scene his liver transplant, so they might want to give the crowd something to cheer about.
Andrew, on August 9th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
For licensing costs, it’s not just fee’s paid to the licensing group, it’s also the money needed implement DRM throughout the system, similar to what Microsoft agreed to. That’s real extra costs for additional hardware, software, and driver reviews/signing by Apple to make sure you don’t have access to the unencrypted video or audio bits. For example, in your laptop, to be ‘enabled’ to play HD video, the signal needs to be encrypted between the video chip on the motherboard and the built-in LCD screen panel. And there has to be some kind of ability to check 30 times a second that you haven’t modified the built-in LCD screen to acquire the signal have it’s been unencrypted.
dave, on August 9th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
I’m not interested in watching BR movies on a laptop. It might be nice to burn BR disks as backups or for file exchange.
I don’t see Apple going this way. BR is a dead end technology. We’re almost at the point I could buy a memory stick for the price os a blank BR disk, and the memory stick would be more useful. I think Apple will skip BR. They’ll let someone else sell an external BR device with drivers for the small number of people who think they really, really need it.
John, on August 10th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Simple fact: a disc cost a few cents to produce, a memory stick hundreds of dollars for the same capacity (50GB).
Like paper a disc cannot be defeated by a memory device that must be produced (in several layers) on a silicon wafer. Not even if the feature size is close to zero. Because it is the price per disc/stick that counts.
So a disc is unbeatable as an distribution medium.
Note also that Steve Jobs mentioned some obstacles regarding Blue-ray. He didn’t say that Blue-ray was an unneeded addition for Apple products.
Apple probably removed the obstacles because it had a good negotiating position by not adopting Blue-ray from the start. So Blue-ray presumably isn’t ‘a bag of hurt’ anymore.
The price of a Blu-ray player isn’t a problem, Apple shouldn’t have any trouble to get a player for 25$ or so in bulk order.
J.
J, on August 10th, 2009 at 5:12 am
@mark: blu-rays are “all digital”. DVDs too, by the way.
Thomas, on August 10th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Until the U.S. gets its act together and ensures wide availability and faster bandwidth for all, and until media companies start providing high-def content at reasonable prices (i.e. less than the cost of a disc-based version) and unencumbered by draconian DRM, I’ll continue to buy and rip DVDs and Blu-Ray discs myself. DRM and greedy/lazy media and broadband companies are the real “bag of hurt” here.
Read-only Blu-Ray drives, which is the only hardware component of a Blu-Ray player that the Mac needs, can be had for as little as $60 — http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=598&N=2010100598, or $140 for a slim drive which would likely fit just fine in an MBP. Since Apple would be purchasing these in bulk and wouldn’t require the case or power supply for the slim drive, it would cost them (but not us, of course) substantially less.
Personally, other than for Blu-Ray media playback, I’d like a re-writable Blu-Ray drive so that I can backup these ever-increasing-in-size HDDs
Mystakill, on August 10th, 2009 at 10:45 am
I don’t care if iTunes plays them, I don’t care if Text Edit plays them.. I want — nay, demand — the ability to watch Blu-Ray discs on my Macs and to author Blu-Ray discs on my Macs. If Apple can’t handle that functionality, then I might as well go back to Windows.
Essefgy, on August 10th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Apple is thinking of the future. Physical media is a dying format. The life span of Blu-Ray will be very short as downloading increasingly becomes the way to get your movies/TV. Apple’s already there with itunes and HD video content. Who really needs an overpriced format that will last maybe another year or two?
Also, who needs cable/satellite? Instead of paying $90 a month, I buy only the shows I want to watch from itunes, or watch them on HULU. The future is now, embrace it.
Ictus75, on August 10th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Yes digital media is cool… it still has its limitations… one in particular being the quality of the audio.
For audiofiles like myself, Blu-Ray still reigns supreme for the delivery of extremely high quality audio in movies.
Until a download from iTunes can deliver a full 7.1 DTS audio signal, there will still be the demand for physical digital media. Home Theater fans… you know what I’m talking about.
A lot of windows laptops now have built in an HDMI connection. Perfect for plugging straight into your complete home theater to get full HD picture AND sound. Imagine a MacBook Pro or iMac controlling your HD home theater… cool!
Some people might point to AppleTV… again… no high end audio. Yes it can produce Dolby Digital 5.1, yet there are those who know that there are technologies and audio that far exceeds standard Dolby.
Apple is not a company to try to please everyone, so whether or not blu-ray and then HDMI make appearances on a MacBook or iMac… doubtful in the near future, but they are missing out on a collection of consumers (like me) who love Apple, and also love their 7.1 (or 5.1) home theater.
Bothinator, on August 11th, 2009 at 8:19 am
I don’t see iTunes offering HD Downloads as getting in the way of offering Blu-Ray – the HD Downloads are only for people with Apple TV (or Mac Mini’s used as media hubs) – if anything, Apple stands to make tons of money if they allowed the HD Content on iTunes to be burned to Blu-Rays (which is probably an even bigger bag of hurt, but one that would have a pot of gold at the bottom)
Second, you’re forgetting a big percentage of Mac users record and edit High-Def content. Having an internal Blu-Ray player would be a plus for that market – Final Cut Pro just added Blu-Ray compatibility.
Also, many video camera capture footage in 1080p these days, if you upload that to iMovie and burn it in iDVD, it’s then being downgraded to 480p. What did you spend all that money on an HD video camera if you can’t burn it to Blu-Ray?
Apple has always been the leader in the A/V computer market – they risk losing that to Sony and Toshiba (!) if they drag their feet on Blu-Ray.
eMan, on August 11th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Hope you’re wrong.
gargravarr, on August 12th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I’m a big fan of Apple in general, but honestly their slow adoption of blu-ray is inexcusable. People stating that physical media is a dying format are deluded. The broadband infrastructure in the US is far to weak to support mass streaming of true hd content and most people want something similar to play on their TV, not their computer. Not to mention that optical disks provide a lot of benefits for corporate backups. Blu-ray is here for at least the next decade, probably 2.
Amazing hi-def televisions are here and cheap, similarly impressive audio receivers can be had sub-$1000 and accept lossless audio formats. I’m supposed to accept a crappy iTunes movie capped at 720p and 5.1 audio when I can spend $5 more and have the blu-ray which I can then rip to my NAS and stream to my PS3 or take with me to a friends house and they can just put it in and play it? Maybe I’m amiss here, but don’t I want more freedom with my content, not less?
Cost and licensing issues are a joke. If I can get a cheaper PC with a blu-ray then obviously other computer manufacturers are up to the task. If anything, that just makes Apple look retarded — “we can’t quite figure out what the most basic PC manufacturers are doing, but hey we’ll charge you twice as much to make up for it!”
Fortunately, I already have a good number of PCs so I’m not missing blu-ray support, but if I was this would be a deal breaker and I’d be switching back to PCs.
Chrispy, on September 15th, 2009 at 11:44 am
@Marco. HD Downloads are not the same thing as Blu-ray. similar, but not the same. and the fact that Apple went for those higher quality downloads and added the ‘extras’ suggests that they are still pushing downloads over internal device support for the compet. I can see them updating Snow Leopard to allow use of an external drive but I can’t see them making a blu-ray player/burner a standard in the box (perhaps a custom order bit for the higher machines like the Pro and the top 24″)
Charli, on September 30th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Apple has until I’m ready to buy my next computer. If they do not have BluRay.. I will go to windows. What’s the point of me buying a premium computer to have to fork over more money to do what I need to do. I know many people in the professional video industry who are pissed off at Apple for holding out so long. It’s not just a question of competition with iTunes, It’s a question of providing a professional machine to people who work in that industry. If Apple want’s to sell computers to that group they have to supply a computer that fits the standards. If they do not, People will not buy it period.
Michael Dodd, on January 26th, 2010 at 6:46 am