03/10/2005, 11:30am, EST
Thursday, March 10th
Apple joins Blu-Ray Disc Association Board
"Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Association board as part of our efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Consumers are already creating stunning HD content with Apple's leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high def DVDs."
The BDA said that Apple has been a leader in driving consumer adoption of DVD authoring since January 2001, with the introduction of its SuperDrive, the industry's first high-volume CD- and DVD-burning drive, and its revolutionary iDVD and DVD Studio Pro software applications. The release also said that Apple is also helping bring High Definition (HD) to market with a complete line of HD content creation tools for consumers and professionals alike including iMovie HD, Final Cut Express HD and Final Cut Pro HD editing software.
Additionally, the next release of Apple's next generation QuickTime 7 will feature the MPEG developed H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) which has been adopted for high definition DVDs. Apple will release QuickTime 7 in conjunction with the release of Mac OS X version 10.4 "Tiger," the fifth major version of Mac OS X that will ship in the first half of 2005.
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Microsoft said not in any future update in Windows XP, Longhorn or in the up coming Xbox 2.
Both Microsoft and Intel admitted that the new Home Media software and hardware could not in it's present form support High Definition of any kind. Intel added that maybe in the future if the market is there to support it.
But so what if Microsoft and Intel doesn't support it. The public won't. With Hardware (e.g.; players) expecting to cost over $900 and with pre-recorded media costing over $50.00 it is going to be a hard sell to the Walmart going general public.
HD-DVD will be DOA
Paramount's announced pricing for HD-DVD titles is $20-30 (their "standard" DVDs list for $15-20). Other studios' pricing is expected to be similar.
As far pricing, if blu-ray disc cost 20-30 bucks then it will be a long time before I start buying movies in that format...
I'm curious about access times with Blu-Ray. It's great you can fit all this high-quality content there, but if it's slow and choppy, who cares? (Try playing a 640x480 Quicktime movie off a CD-ROM...) As it is, DVD-Rs take a while to mount on the desktop and navigate, whereas CD-ROMs are nice and quick. Using that comparison, I shudder to think how long it would take to navigate a Blu-Ray disc hard drive backup.
also interesting. yet another tie between apple and sony with specific mention of h.264. this new shakeup could mean the end of what (if anything) apple and sony might have been cooking up, or it could kick start it.