Apple, the Mac and Blu-Ray
February 22, 2008 12:34 pmApple, Mac, Opinion
Now that HD-DVD has officially lost the HD format battle, and Blu-Ray has emerged the victor, many Mac sites are speculating that Apple will soon implement Blu-Ray playback support into its system and start selling Blu-Ray drives in its computers.
I’m not sure Apple will implement Blu-ray playback into OS X any time soon.
One thing most people don’t know is the requirements to get the license to playback HD stuff on computers. The rules require that the playback device makes sure that the chain from the computer’s DVD drive, to the RAM, to buffers, to the graphics card, to the cable, to the display are all encrypted. That is all in order to close the ‘Analogue Hole’.
Did you know that Vista checks for chain encryption integrity for every frame when it’s playing HD contents? That’s 30 times every second (talk about paranoia). Try to buy a Vista system that can play HD stuff and see what onerous requirements you’ll find. You’ll have to buy specific graphics cards, specific monitors etc…
For Apple to implement Blu-Ray playback it has to do a lot of work to be compliant; and the requirements would put quite a burden on the system. I believe that’s the reason that currently, with iTunes rental service one can get HD rentals on the AppleTV only and not on one’s Mac. The AppleTV is a closed unit with an HDMI connection, meeting the stringent requirements for HD playback. Many people don’t expect this, but if you connect the AppleTV to your HD TV using the component video connectors instead of HDMI, the AppleTV won’t display rented HD contents in HD, you’ll get an SD version of the rented movie.
I’m not sure I want Apple to implement that kind of crap into the system that I use every day, in order to do something that I couldn’t care less about.
I mean really, does it make any difference if the stuff is true HD on a computer screen considering that the largest one currently is is 30″?
I would guess that Apple would implement Blu-Ray as a storage device on the Mac in order to take advantage of the huge capacity that it provides, and would leave HD playback to downloads and the AppleTV.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:23 am
I strongly disagree. I very much want Blu-ray playback on my Mac, but there’s currently no (legal) way to play HD on the Mac, despite the drives. 30″ is plenty large enough if your not sitting across the room since it is >HD in resolution. Moreover, I don’t want to be dependent on downloading some giant file for hours, using up my bandwidth, to get a video that is still much lower quality than Blu-ray (due to compression), and then be dependent on playing it on a device that doesn’t even support DivX! No, getting Blu-ray discs is a heck of a lot cheaper, easier, and higher quality for most of us. While implementing Blu-ray playback may indeed be a pain for Apple and may be computationally demanding, it’s not as if it will effect your everyday system performance in anyway when your not currently playing Blu-ray. No, I think Apple is just getting greedy about iTunes again, which will ultimate result in the AppleTV flopping again. The iPod only succeeded because it used open standards (mp3) and iTunes allowed ripping from the physical media (CDs), not because of downloading. If they want AppleTV to succeed, they need to use open standards again (DivX) and allow at least playing from the physical media (Blu-ray). Otherwise, people will buy the many Blu-ray-DivX combo devices.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
DivX is not a standard. MPG4 (h264) used by the AppleTV and distributed by iTunes is an open standard. Open as in anybody can license it and implement it, just like MP3.
In order for Apple to implement Blu-ray playback on the Mac, they need to license and implement all the technology required by the Blu-ray format and they can only do it under the strict rules that those licenses attempt to enforce.
For example, in order to playback all blu-ray disks, Apple will have to license and implement the VC1 codec, which is basically Windows Media 9. If I were Apple, I would be very hesitant to do such a thing.
You think that having blu-ray playback won’t affect anything on your system if you’re not playing back a blu-ray disk? I guess you didn’t know that in order to get the license, Apple is required to try to make sure that no software that can read the blu-ray disc and maybe rip it into a file (like handbrake) can run. So Mac OS X would need to play the role of the enforcer, even when Apple’s DVD player software is not active.
For a Mac to be allowed to play blu-ray disc in full resolution, All the hardware needs to be certified by the blu-ray consortium, so you won’t be able to play it on the current crop of Apple monitors, especially the 30″ one. That monitor does not support encrypted signal.
Only the laptops and the iMac would possibly be able to play it because they’re closed systems. Not the Mac Mini, and not the Mac Pro.
If you were Apple, would you take on something that you can’t easily explain to your customers?
Picture this scenario: Apple announces Blu-ray playback capability in Mac OS X. A regular Joe has a Mac Mini hooked up to a 30″ monitors. He goes out and gets an external Blu-ray player. He hooks it up and goes to play his blu-ray disc but gets a crappy picture (because Mac OS X would have to degrade his picture to standard resolution for lack of a fully encrypted chain). What do you think his reaction would be? Would he blame the people behind blu-ray for their stupid rules or would he blame Apple and thinks that the Mac sucks for this reason?
If you were Apple, would you put yourself in this position?
You are free to have your own opinion. And you can hope to get blu-ray on your system. I was only explaining why it may not happen anytime soon.