Blu-Ray Apple
Role:
Date: March 15th, 2007
Long awaited next mac mini, and how it may use blu-ray drives.
Apple TV is dead before it even left the shelf
Apple TV has arrived, but it has a few flaws. These flaws are virtually un-noticable in the current technology market.
The device will only support 720p HD at the maximum, whereas Blu-ray is a true full HD format, supporting upto 1080p. The difference being? 1080p is the highest standard currently available on the consumer market, with prices tumbling on FullHD televisions by the minute, 1080p will soon be the desired format, this is where Blu-ray fits in neatly. A graph showing 1080p and 720p conparisons can be found here.
Strangely enough the device only supports it’s own Codecs, and is not upgradable. At this time, that excludes some common industry formats like AC3 (used for 5.1 audio). Essentially this means audio from ripped DVD’s won’t work on the Apple TV. Currently frontrow can run DVD’s from the existing mac mini, Apple TV has no DVD support at all.
As we rip mp3’s today from CD’s, the future may well be ripping movies from DVD’s and storing them on our computers. Apple TV is no way “future proof” for this reality.
Blu-Ray for TV?
Apple have decided to ride the Blu-ray train, joining the big party over at Sony. Is it fun at the party? Are there free drinks? Well, not quite. You have to pay for your own drinks because, Blu-ray ain’t cheap. No free bar here.
In fact the cheapest player on the market is the PS3 (play station three), still carrying a heavy price tag.
Consumers will have a hard time using Blu-Ray for anything other than Movies. For data storage it will be fantastic, but do you really want to put 30gb of your data on one disc? I doubt Apple plan for anything but movie playback, with writable drives coming to scene later.
So where does Apple TV fit in?
What the market needs is a mid range player, taking Apple’s entry level home machine and beefing it up to play Blu-ray at 1080p via HDMI makes all the sense in the world, because then it would be a mid range consumer product. Forcing the Apple TV unit down one more notch – making it appear cheaper. Mac Mini on the other hand will be able to go up in price, considering it would need a graphics card of some sort – currently it can barely push 720p without serious slow down.
Several predictions have already been made about Blu-ray Intel Macintoshes, although the rumour mill has been fairly silent until recently, pointing all fingers at Apple’s imminent release of Leopard (OSX 10.5) having Blu-ray support.
An interesting question is; are Sony holding Apple back?
So will it really happen. Does the market really need a new Blu-ray HDTV product that is essentially going head-to-head with the other HDTV product, the AppleTV?
Timing would say yes!