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DVDs, Blu-ray discs may be around longer than most pundits think

Written by: Dennis Sellers

Article Overview: Whether or not Blu-ray ever succeeds in replacing DVDs, I do wish that Apple would offer the necessary support in Mac OS X (Snow Leopard, perhaps) so that third parties could make Blu-ray players (as well as recorders, which are already offered) for the Mac. I know that Apple wants to convince us that renting and buying movies online are the future (which is why we may never see Blu-ray player/recorders built into a Mac), but hat future is a ways off yet.

DVDs, Blu-ray discs may be around longer than most pundits think

Whether or not Blu-ray ever succeeds in replacing DVDs, I do wish that Apple would offer the necessary support in Mac OS X (Snow Leopard, perhaps) so that third parties could make Blu-ray players (as well as recorders, which are already offered) for the Mac. I know that Apple wants to convince us that renting and buying movies online are the future (which is why we may never see Blu-ray player/recorders built into a Mac), but hat future is a ways off yet.

For instance, in a Hartford Courant article, Kevin Hunt wrote about buying Quantum of Solace from the iTunes Store. He said it consumed close to 5GB on his hard drive, almost 3.5GB for the HD version that included high-resolution video (1280×544) and a Dolby Digital soundtrack. He says that, in “music currency, Solace is almost 900 songs. Downloading it took about 90 minutes. Then, as Hunt points out, there is a quality factor.

Even at the bigger file sizes, iTunes HD still isn’t quite Blu-ray quality because Apple must use enough compression so the file will download in a reasonable time over a broadband connection. Hunt thinks that “Blu-ray may hang on for a few years now that prices for players have dropped to about $200 and movies cost close to their DVD counterparts.”

“No one doubts that on-demand, digital distribution is the future,” he says. “The question is where it will come from: cable, satellite, Internet or your telephone company? Or will it be: Wherever you want to get it? Here’s the difference. People don’t care if the music they download from iTunes isn’t a perfect match for a CD because it doesn’t matter on an iPod. When those same people download video to watch on an HDTV, though, they’ll value HD quality as much as convenience.”

That’s the very reason I think that Blu-ray, or at least DVDs, will have a longer life span than most people are predicting. Plus, many of us (perhaps we’re dinosaurs) still like to have music and videos we own in physical as well as digital formats. Personally, I love the DVDs that now come with digital copies. I think all DVDs and Blu-ray discs should include these.

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Article Tags: blu ray players, broadband connection, cable satellite, counterparts, digital distribution, dinosaurs, doubts, hartford courant, hd version, hdtv, high resolution, kevin hunt, life span, mac os x, necessary support, perfect match, quality factor, satellite internet, solace, telephone company



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