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Blu-ray playback comes to OSX

8K views 56 replies 14 participants last post by  harzack86 
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#1 ·
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#4 ·
I doubt Apple will ever offer native BR support as it's a competing format to something they offer (downloads). Sad but true.

I read the comments about it being a VLC wrapper after I posted this link ... but afaik VLC still doesn't have BR support on OSX unless I've missed something. If it does, has anyone with a BR drive tried it yet? I'd be willing to pick myself up an external BR drive for my home theatre setup if I knew it would work.
 
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#17 ·
+1

Downloading 50G worth of content (or more) per movie is extremely unlikely at best. High bitrate 1080p + extras is not something that download will be catching up to for a long while methinks.
 
#19 ·
i think optical discs will lose out in the end b/c of convenience.

I'm videotaping my son's soccer games in HD. I'm creating both DVDs (for the rest of the team) and AppleTV/iPad files for him. I'm cringing at the quality of the DVDs - they look fine, but obviously not as good as when I'm editing the uncompressed footage.

I've offered to create i-device files, but not one parent has jumped on it. I was a bit surprised b/c I know some do have iphones and ipads. I there there is a massive segment of the population who still prefer discs, but eventually, that will change....how long it takes is another question. Most of my clients still prefer a physical disc in their hands.

Unless Apple or someone comes up with a real spanky way of compressing files of 1080P quality, I don't know if ppl will want to dload the massive files.

The other caveat for me is sound quality. I'm no audio buff, but I do have a nice 5.1 set up and no appletv file (itunes dloaded or otherwise) comes even close to the audio quality of a blu ray disc. Visually, I've seen some very excellent BR rips, but I much prefer BR disc for audio. Action movies are just awesome and I think they'd be 'meh' without the audio quality of the discs.

BUT, we are becoming a very lazy society and I can see people not caring about that as much. It'll be about convenience. Definitely for drama or comedy movies...who cares about audio...i'm in that boat for those themes, but i wouldn't dare watch a Lord of the rings digital file. Even the DVD has amazing sound.

just my 2 cents.
Keebler
 
#20 ·
i think optical discs will lose out in the end b/c of convenience.

BUT, we are becoming a very lazy society and I can see people not caring about that as much. It'll be about convenience. Definitely for drama or comedy movies...who cares about audio...i'm in that boat for those themes, but i wouldn't dare watch a Lord of the rings digital file. Even the DVD has amazing sound.

just my 2 cents.
Keebler
While I agree with societies laziness, look at the variety of drive-thrus, I disagree with the abandonment of blu-ray and its replacement will be from laziness. While I do think that convenience is a major point, I also think that as technology progresses, downloading large files will become the more efficient transmission of information and quality will increase. Eventually, we will be able to download Blu-ray quality video/audio with short download times. Is this going to happen anytime soon? no probably not, but it is the inevitable distribution solution, yes. As the quality gap decreases, it will no longer be about "laziness".
 
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#21 ·
I order most of my blu-ray's online and they are delivered to my door. That's pretty convenient as far as I'm concerned and it doesn't waste all my bandwidth downloading sub-standard quality movies. The overall bitrate of most "HD" movies on the ITMS is around 1/10th of the bitrate of just a single surround sound audio track on most blu-rays.

I guess if you're in a hurry to watch a movie (or rent a movie) then downloading is ok, but I would honestly rather wait for the blu-rays to arrive or go and buy them at the store. Also another big plus for purchasing the media on optical disc is that I can lend it or give it to friends and family, or even sell it once I'm done with it, with the iTunes offerings it's DRM locked to your account forever and has zero resale value or lend-ability.
 
#29 ·
Anyone who says something like that has been misinformed or hasn't actually looked into the blu-ray licensing.

It truly *is* a bag of hurt.

Let me put it this way- if you want to license the BR tech, then you gotta include the Cinavia DRM protection (an audio watermarking tech that prevents you from playing back Bluray disks you yourself owned and ripped). This is now a requirement to produce a BR player. The fun thing here is that Cinavia is active regardless of if you're playing a BR disk or not.

That means that if you're producing a network streamer with BR capabilities- then Cinavia must apply to all media played through that device, regardless of the source.

It's stupid stuff like that which makes blu-ray a "bag of hurt".

Frankly, I'm glad it's not Apple who decided to incorporate BR. Because if they did, then that licensing might very well go "infective" and influence/change other parts of the operating system.

-DN
Whoopie. Cinavia existed in DVDs (prior to Blu-Ray) and it still managed to do well. Stop acting like it's a big f'ing wall. It's no worse than Macrovision, DVD CSS, and a multitude of other DRM technology that's existed.

Apple is cattle-prodding it's customers; the so-called bag o' hurt is completely irrelevant on the PC side and works just fine.
 
#24 ·
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#25 ·
At 10mbps they would be 6-7 times larger than they are now most likely -- unless they figure out better compression between now and then. It really depends on the content as well, animated stuff will probably compress pretty well, "smoke and fire" type movies, not so much.

It's a step in the right direction quality wise, you can make a 10mb stream look pretty good @ 1080p ... but it still doesn't account for the overly compressed audio, missing features, etc.

As for pricing I dunno, but typically if you add a plus sign to the end of something it costs more ;)
 
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#32 ·
You are right, I stand corrected. 2.5x larger is correct. You're also right on increasing the quality (even to keep in on par with a mbps vs. amount of pixels it would have to be more than 2.5x increase).

People often forget ... 1080p is not twice the size of 720p (on a pixel count basis), it's about 4x the amount of pixels, so in this case it's a 2.5x increase in bitrate to be used for 4x more pixels so it's technically a quality loss at that point mathematically speaking.
 
#27 ·
Hard to believe I spent forty two and a half years of my life watching what I thought were pretty good 480p movies and thinking they looked just fine.
 
#31 ·
Wrong.

Cinavia was built and designed for Bluray, among other things. It spread into DVD, much like a cancer would. The only DVD disks to contain Cinavia are 2010/2011 releases. No movies prior to 2010 contain Cinavia. Bluray has existed far prior to 2010.

DVD CSS has never been an issue for me, because just about everything on the planet will read it. I've ripped my entire DVD library to disk so I can watch whatever I want whenever I want, wherever I want in the house. Never had any problems. However, three of the recent movies we've bought (which were ripped on PC) flat out refuse to play over a network stream. They will for 15 minutes, then Cinavia kicks in on the PS3 and mutes the audio. These are legally bought discs by the way. We returned all three of those discs to the store as defective and got refunds.

Any DRM is a "big f'ing wall" until tools exist to get around it.

People like you are the reason why we're in this mess. You just sit around and watch your rights as a consumer whittle away, say something like "Oh whoopie, big f'ing deal, get over it", then do precisely what the corporations want you to do- keep on buying their stuff.

I no longer purchase Bluray myself. The format is too messed up for what you're paying, and the level of support that is required to make it run is simply absurd (BR requires a full-fledged Java VM just to run the movie menus). Give me an unencrypted format as close to lossless as possible, jam it on a disk (don't need no flashy menus) and I'm happy. None of this extra "online trivia" bull**** and/or all the crap that requires an internet connection for BD-Live.

-DN
How do you feel about the DRM found on iTunes Store movies?
 
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#45 ·
At the moment, new releases are either obtained on DVD and torrented for HD, or if there's no DVD- flat out torrented.
You do realize of course that the DVD's you're buying are DRMed as well right? Just one that's easier to get around and is supported natively by OSX. If BR's were supported by OSX for playback you probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

While I agree that DRM hurts everyone it's just not going to away, period. Either roll with the punches and live with the changes as it happens or be doomed to keep playing those old school formats forever and only watch new movies in the theatre. Maybe whatever the next big format is won't be such a bag of hurt, but again I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

In the meantime ... I still want to be able to play my BD's on OSX!
 
#42 ·
i understand what you're saying, and agree to a certain point, but the issue you really have isn't with the blu-ray format, it's with the studios. any digital content moving forward is going to have some DRM, copy protection or lock on it. It's unfortunate, but i also understand why the studios feel they have to do it with an entire pirate/bootleg industry that exists worldwide.

unfortunately everybody loses in one way or another.
 
#43 ·
DRM is a restriction put in place to protect studios from pirating, and unfortunately it only hurts people that don't pirate and restricts them from using their media privately.

Unfortunately the attitude of some, especially those who torrent and refuse to buy what they download, only reinforces the studios belief and gives them some merit to stand on.

Also, I also don't think one has the right to upgrade in perpetuity for free. Just because one buys the DVD, doesn't mean one has the right to download 1080P versions of the media. I am all for making digital copies for your own entertainment, I don't believe the media format should be the limiting factor, one should be able to rip dvds, blurays etc to digital files to be played on home media players.

I believe that Studios and people that pirate are the ones to blame, legitimate consumers are the ones left paying for it. However, eventually I think consumers will have to start changing their actions as this is getting a bit ridiculous.


About Cinevia, I believe it is based on an audio watermark that "apparently" some rippers can remove. I believe DVDFab makes this claim.
 
#48 ·
About Cinevia, I believe it is based on an audio watermark that "apparently" some rippers can remove. I believe DVDFab makes this claim.
They don't remove it, they can create a clone disc or a movie only disc that still has it, and is recognized as legal by the PS3.
 
#44 ·
It's a classic case of why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free. Fact is, people, as represented by companies like Napster, Morpheus and Limewire, outsmarted the companies a long time ago, first with music MP3's via p2p sharing, which is not in itself strictly illegal, but the redistribution without compensation of copyright material is, and then moving on to movies, software, and whatever else could be shared for free. People have been doing it so long that they feel justified and entitled and see nothing wrong with it. Then it just becomes a cat and mouse game of creating barriers and outsmarting those barriers which never really gets to the legal or moral issues involved: if you really like the artist so much, why wouldn't you do everything to make sure they're compensated for their work?

That being said, I do see a certain kind of gouging when you buy the LP record to begin with, then the cassette, then the CD, and then buy the same songs again online. I'm pretty sure I've done my share to compensate my favorite artists many times over. At the same time, I know many young people whose collections consist of nothing but hundreds or thousands of pirated songs, movies, and other software that they never have any intention of paying for. I teach my own kids to purchase from iTunes or buy CD's, but there's a whole generation out there that does not get the connection between piracy and ripping off the very artists they admire. Not sure how to fix that one; it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
 
#46 ·
Well said.

The reality, as pointed out already, is that movies will always contain a level of DRM. I'm not really sure why, in many cases, this makes people so upset. I don't really see the connection between, "I own this BR movie," and "as a result, it shouldn't have DRM as I should be free to do what I want with it." Even back in VHS days, the law still stated that said movies could not legally be copied, redistributed, etc. Fast-forward 15-20 years and that same law hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is stricter enforcement of said law by applying DRM to said movies. That noted, is DRM in fact actually an unfair practice by the studios who lose millions annually in movie rentals and/or sales?

As pointed out by another poster - at the end of the day, it's the end user who doesn't pay for their movies that forces the stand of the studios to apply ruthless DRM on their content. If you do pirate films, you have yourself to blame first for this messy DRM long before anyone else.
 
#49 ·
I'm not a huge movie consumer, but feel in line with most of the comments in this thread.

Here is my workflow:
- I buy BR movie mostly because they can handle an HD TV and usually have audio tracks in English and French (unlike movies purchased in the iTunes Store).
- I rip it using a PC + BR drive with DVD Fab. Until I can find an equivalent on Mac, I'll keep the PC for that.
- I encode it with Handbrake, using the Apple TV2 preset, and make sure I include both English and French tracks
- I use "Subler" to add metadata, including title, description, jacket and rating for parental control
- I copy the final file to a NAS
- Import it (Option + drag & drop) without copying it inside iTunes
- Play it on the Apple TV 2 with my choice of language, and a great image quality on my 720p TV.

Its a bit tedious, but as I said, I don't buy movies everyday, and I find it worth for getting rid of DRM and all the other content BS, yet legally owning the movie...
 
#51 ·
What would you suggest then for playing movies in English and French on an Apple TV 2 connected to a 720p TV, that doesn't involve pointless dumb operation which are wasting time? I'm open to any suggestion to improve this that doesn't involve buying a new TV or a BR player.
 
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