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Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

engadget.com

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Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#41

Post by dkokelley »

ZoFreX wrote: post #30
dkokelley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

If I had a place to stream it from, I could easily stream an HD movie with my connection. It's not like in the future /less/ people are going to have fast internet!

You are both correct and very blessed to have such a good connection. In my experience, even people with decent internet speed seldom see that speed sustained for the entirety of a large download or stream.

A Blu-Ray disk holds 50GB. At a 10Mb/s connection (fairly common in the US), that would take over 11 hours to download, assuming no interruptions. Even at 100Mb/s it would take about an hour. Assuming you're streaming 2 hours of content you only have a 2:1 ratio of play time to download time, and that's still assuming no service interruptions. Most consumer ISPs promote their max burst rate in their packages, but for larger files kick the actual speeds down.

But again, there's no reason to assume the situation won't improve in the future, even with the exponential growth in number of devices online and increased usage per device.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#42

Post by protomyth »

dkokelley wrote: post #9
garyrichardson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I found this article whiney. The last time I had to use a DVD was upgrading to Snow Leopard. When I went to do the upgrade I had to take my 1 year old laptop in to get fixed because the DVD drive wasn't working on it -- it in fact probably never worked. I remember when BluRay 'beat' HD-DVD. By the time HD-DVD was dropped by Toshiba I was already thinking "who cares? no one is going to buy bluray anyway." I susp…

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

I really wish someone (Red Box, Apple) had built kiosks with local cacheing and good down speeds to sell movies at 1080p with a bit rate higher than Blu-Ray. Plug a flash USB in and away you go.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#43

Post by dkokelley »

henrikschroder wrote: post #19
dkokelley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

Or a USB stick.

BR disk: 50GB. USB stick: 64GB

Do you know what a 64GB USB stick costs? For now, USB sticks are not a cost effective way for Sony et. all to deliver their content. I'm sure the price will come down in the future though.

For ahem personal (non-DRMed) use, USB sticks are fine, since you can use and reuse as necessary.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#44

Post by garyrichardson »

ZoFreX wrote: post #28
9999 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the Blu-Ray market will pretty much be just slightly larger than the Laserdisc market was. I say it will be slightly larger because in the case of LDs, only highly affluent home theater geeks could afford to buy the players and the discs, whereas BD is priced much more competitively. EDIT: We can also include everyone that doesn't have access to high speed broadband as candidates for BD, so the potential market is…

One point frequently missed by people mocking blu-ray is that a lot of people are using it now pretty much by accident. I have a PS3 for playing games, and at a later date I got a LoveFilm subscription (it's like Netflix but British and rubbish). Now, if I want to watch a movie, it doesn't cost me a penny extra to watch the blu-ray. Do I want high def /for free/? Hell yes, I do! So I think Blu Ray will be sticking ar…

I would say the majority of people don't really care about the difference between BR and regular def DVD's. Hell, I know/understand the difference and I still don't care.

Audio CD's offered many advantages over tapes and records: audio quality, form factor, reliability. DVD's were much better than VHS for the same reasons. Other than being higher quality, BluRay doesn't really offer anything. I'm not going to replace any of the DVD's I own with BR. In fact, I'm getting rid of the DVD's and depending on streaming services so I don't have to store all that crap.

Based on that, I would actually wager that DVD will be around a lot longer than BluRay. 8 tracks were popular and are basically all gone now, but people still use records.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#45

Post by glassx »

jinushaun wrote: post #21

People always bring up the floppy drive example, but I didn't remember the huge outcry over the lack of a floppy drive that everyone mentions. By the time Apple dropped support for it, I hadn't used a floppy disk in years. Sure, PC tech pundits and journalists were up in arms, but that's their job. As for optical drives, I have probably used it maybe half a dozen times over the past few years if you don't count an XB…

I remember vaguely... The first iMac was released in 1997, I think?, and the outcry was because they dropped not only the floppy but also parallel and serial ports. Some people called it "a toy".

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#46

Post by ZoFreX »

dkokelley wrote: post #41
ZoFreX wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a place to stream it from, I could easily stream an HD movie with my connection. It's not like in the future /less/ people are going to have fast internet!

You are both correct and very blessed to have such a good connection. In my experience, even people with decent internet speed seldom see that speed sustained for the entirety of a large download or stream. A Blu-Ray disk holds 50GB. At a 10Mb/s connection (fairly common in the US), that would take over 11 hours to download, assuming no interruptions. Even at 100Mb/s it would take about an hour. Assuming you're strea…

You could also run a digital "rental" service - the "delivery time" is how long it takes to download when your connection isn't being used. Of course, that would only help people with slow connections rather than those with harsh caps, but it's something perhaps.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#47

Post by glassx »

hackoder wrote: post #34

I don't think the issue here is (just) optical drive vs no optical drive. Its the implications that are pointed to in the article, i.e. Apple controlling the hardware, software and content on the device. Of course, Apple will not do this completely overnight, but it does seem like we're moving in that direction one step at a time. I think Apple/Steve's long term vision has always been for the PC to be like all other…

I've been hearing this for a couple years, and I even had some people mistakenly telling me they don't get a MacBook because they think it only runs Apple-approved software.

I don't really think it's gonna happen. "It runs Windows" is a major selling point for a lot of people I know.

But I'll be the first to jump ship if this ever happens.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#48

Post by hackoder »

glassx wrote: post #47
hackoder wrote: post #34

I don't think the issue here is (just) optical drive vs no optical drive. Its the implications that are pointed to in the article, i.e. Apple controlling the hardware, software and content on the device. Of course, Apple will not do this completely overnight, but it does seem like we're moving in that direction one step at a time. I think Apple/Steve's long term vision has always been for the PC to be like all other…

I've been hearing this for a couple years, and I even had some people mistakenly telling me they don't get a MacBook because they think it only runs Apple-approved software. I don't really think it's gonna happen. "It runs Windows" is a major selling point for a lot of people I know. But I'll be the first to jump ship if this ever happens.

Its just a guess based on how things are moving. Won't be the first time I've been wrong about Apple :)

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#49

Post by dkokelley »

ZoFreX wrote: post #46
dkokelley wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both correct and very blessed to have such a good connection. In my experience, even people with decent internet speed seldom see that speed sustained for the entirety of a large download or stream. A Blu-Ray disk holds 50GB. At a 10Mb/s connection (fairly common in the US), that would take over 11 hours to download, assuming no interruptions. Even at 100Mb/s it would take about an hour. Assuming you're strea…

You could also run a digital "rental" service - the "delivery time" is how long it takes to download when your connection isn't being used. Of course, that would only help people with slow connections rather than those with harsh caps, but it's something perhaps.

Yes the caps would be a pain to get around, but having the BR quality file delivered overnight is a possible solution. Of course when it's movie time you usually select the movie just before watching it (at least we do), so it might be difficult to get someone to accept a 12 hour wait for their 1080p movie.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#50

Post by ZoFreX »

dkokelley wrote: post #49
ZoFreX wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also run a digital "rental" service - the "delivery time" is how long it takes to download when your connection isn't being used. Of course, that would only help people with slow connections rather than those with harsh caps, but it's something perhaps.

Yes the caps would be a pain to get around, but having the BR quality file delivered overnight is a possible solution. Of course when it's movie time you usually select the movie just before watching it (at least we do), so it might be difficult to get someone to accept a 12 hour wait for their 1080p movie.

If you span it right I think you might be able to get away with it - after all, Netflix works and that takes longer than 12 hours! This would also be less effort as you wouldn't have to post discs back.
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