4 ms·

There's a lot to like about this computer, but a lot to dislike as well, even for those who favor a minimalist aesthetic. For example, designing the "Remote Di

by pius 19y ago

There's a lot to like about this computer, but a lot to dislike as well, even for those who favor a minimalist aesthetic. For example, designing the "Remote Disc" feature was great; telling the world with a straight face that "you can just wireless rent movies from Apple instead of playing DVDs" was just lame.

dcurtis 19y ago
Yeah, but he's right. The future of entertainment doesn't have DVDs in it. I'm hoping with Apple TV I can skip BluRay alltogether, but I haven't seen the HD specs from the iTunes store yet.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Apple TV has to be using some serious compression to be able to serve you a 720p movie fast enough that you can watch it as it does. You're still getting an inferior experience to the guy with Blu-Ray, especially if he has a 1080p capable set. That said, highly compressed 720p is still going to be an upgrade to a lot of people over a standard DVD. Perhaps only obsessives like me will care.
  - boucher 19y ago
    You obviously weren't watching the keynote. Steve demoed downloading and starting an SD movie, not an HD one. SD downloads fast enough to start "instantly". HD does not. The claim that this is "highly compressed" is baseless.
    - mattmaroon 19y ago
      It still has to be highly compressed. An uncompressed HD movie is something like 25 gb. I don't have or want iTunes so I can't verify it, but I'd be surprised if the files they send are more than 1/10th of that.
      - tlrobinson 19y ago
        True, it is most likely compressed, but compression does not have to be lossy. Apple tends to use H.264/MPEG-4, which is (or at least can be?) lossless. It would be silly to send uncompressed HD video to the Apple TV when lossless or nearly lossless compression could be used. The only other thing I can say on the matter is that I was at Macworld today, and they were demoing Apple TV playing an HD movie on a giant screen (probably 50 feet across) and it looked excellent.
        mattmaroon 19y ago
        Well, h.264 is a fine codec, but just like aac, it offers a range of quality, and better quality means bigger files. I haven't played around with it to see how it handles motion, but I know with DivX/WMV that's always been a big problem. I can't imagine watching an action movie in compressed 720p is going to be anywhere near as good as uncompressed 1080p, but then I also can't imagine most people will know or care about the difference.
        boucher 19y ago
        You've gone from complaining that the device has super compressed 720p which won't be as good as blue-ray, to claiming that you don't really know what it will look like, but that any compression on 720p video will look worse than uncompressed 1080p. The facts on blue-ray: "Discs encoded in MPEG-2 video typically limit content producers to around two hours of high-definition content on a single-layer (25 GB) BD-ROM. The more advanced video codecs (VC-1 and H.264) typically achieve a video runtime twice that of MPEG-2, with comparable quality." In all likelihood, iTunes is using H.264, or their newest variant. The same as blue-ray. So, in reality, the choice of codec matters a great deal, blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie), and yes, 1080p is better than 720p. And it's also worth noting that digital cable, and as far as I know every other on demand HD video service, is also "highly compressed" 720p.
        mattmaroon 19y ago
        Huh? First you said that uncompressed movies take up about 25gb for 2 hours. Blu-ray movies are generally around 25gb, which leaves the second layer free for extras or whatever. Then you said that "blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie)" By your own math they would only take up 12.5ish gb if compressed. I actually am curious what digital cable uses. It's definitely 720p in my area, and probably compressed, but not highly.
  - far33d 19y ago
    Most people can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p resolution at any normal home viewing size or viewing distance. The issue of compression is a bit more hard to answer, since all these formats all use the same codec. I have no idea what parameters you can tweak to make the same resolution video smaller.
axod 19y ago
no, discs, DVDs, blueray, HD-DVD... they are all dead. My MacBooks superdrive is barely of use anyway since it has stupid region coding on it so I can't play half the DVDs I own. I think it's great Apple have 'got it' as regards the future. In 5 years people are unlikely to be shoving discs into things.
- pius 19y ago
  Blu-Ray, DVDs, and HD-DVD are dead? Not so fast there. :) As tempting as it is, I won't get baited into that particular discussion. My point was that the idea of eschewing viewing the DVDs I already own in favor of renting from Apple is preposterous. As they say in Propaganda, Jobs was "passing from the acceptable to the dubious" with product placement thinly veiled as cool minimalism.
  - imsteve 19y ago
    Just look at what the college down to the first grade kids are doing these days.... disks are dead.
    - palish 19y ago
      Letting people rent movies on USB sticks may work. They could rent out several movies at a time, and you wouldn't need to keep track of them separately. They could also throw in a few random free movies, too. And since the sticks are ordered en masse, they'd probably pay for themselves within a short amount of time. It's something Blockbuster could try to stay in the game, at least.
      - dcurtis 19y ago
        Why? The internet is a much better and cheaper alternative, and it offers the enormous upside of instant gratification. Software might come on USB sticks for a while in the future, I think, but eventually even that will be delivered digitally. Valve has done this insanely well with Steam.
noonespecial 19y ago
Handbrake. Don't watch dvd's without it! Half of the new releases these days include copy protection "features" that make the super drive go bonkers when trying to play the disk. Far better to handbrake it and them just watch the files with VLC.

by pius 19y ago

dcurtis 19y ago

Yeah, but he's right. The future of entertainment doesn't have DVDs in it. I'm hoping with Apple TV I can skip BluRay alltogether, but I haven't seen the HD specs from the iTunes store yet.

mattmaroon 19y ago
Apple TV has to be using some serious compression to be able to serve you a 720p movie fast enough that you can watch it as it does. You're still getting an inferior experience to the guy with Blu-Ray, especially if he has a 1080p capable set. That said, highly compressed 720p is still going to be an upgrade to a lot of people over a standard DVD. Perhaps only obsessives like me will care.
- boucher 19y ago
  You obviously weren't watching the keynote. Steve demoed downloading and starting an SD movie, not an HD one. SD downloads fast enough to start "instantly". HD does not. The claim that this is "highly compressed" is baseless.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    It still has to be highly compressed. An uncompressed HD movie is something like 25 gb. I don't have or want iTunes so I can't verify it, but I'd be surprised if the files they send are more than 1/10th of that.
    - tlrobinson 19y ago
      True, it is most likely compressed, but compression does not have to be lossy. Apple tends to use H.264/MPEG-4, which is (or at least can be?) lossless. It would be silly to send uncompressed HD video to the Apple TV when lossless or nearly lossless compression could be used. The only other thing I can say on the matter is that I was at Macworld today, and they were demoing Apple TV playing an HD movie on a giant screen (probably 50 feet across) and it looked excellent.
      - mattmaroon 19y ago
        Well, h.264 is a fine codec, but just like aac, it offers a range of quality, and better quality means bigger files. I haven't played around with it to see how it handles motion, but I know with DivX/WMV that's always been a big problem. I can't imagine watching an action movie in compressed 720p is going to be anywhere near as good as uncompressed 1080p, but then I also can't imagine most people will know or care about the difference.
        boucher 19y ago
        You've gone from complaining that the device has super compressed 720p which won't be as good as blue-ray, to claiming that you don't really know what it will look like, but that any compression on 720p video will look worse than uncompressed 1080p. The facts on blue-ray: "Discs encoded in MPEG-2 video typically limit content producers to around two hours of high-definition content on a single-layer (25 GB) BD-ROM. The more advanced video codecs (VC-1 and H.264) typically achieve a video runtime twice that of MPEG-2, with comparable quality." In all likelihood, iTunes is using H.264, or their newest variant. The same as blue-ray. So, in reality, the choice of codec matters a great deal, blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie), and yes, 1080p is better than 720p. And it's also worth noting that digital cable, and as far as I know every other on demand HD video service, is also "highly compressed" 720p.
        mattmaroon 19y ago
        Huh? First you said that uncompressed movies take up about 25gb for 2 hours. Blu-ray movies are generally around 25gb, which leaves the second layer free for extras or whatever. Then you said that "blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie)" By your own math they would only take up 12.5ish gb if compressed. I actually am curious what digital cable uses. It's definitely 720p in my area, and probably compressed, but not highly.
- far33d 19y ago
  Most people can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p resolution at any normal home viewing size or viewing distance. The issue of compression is a bit more hard to answer, since all these formats all use the same codec. I have no idea what parameters you can tweak to make the same resolution video smaller.

axod 19y ago

no, discs, DVDs, blueray, HD-DVD... they are all dead. My MacBooks superdrive is barely of use anyway since it has stupid region coding on it so I can't play half the DVDs I own. I think it's great Apple have 'got it' as regards the future. In 5 years people are unlikely to be shoving discs into things.

pius 19y ago
Blu-Ray, DVDs, and HD-DVD are dead? Not so fast there. :) As tempting as it is, I won't get baited into that particular discussion. My point was that the idea of eschewing viewing the DVDs I already own in favor of renting from Apple is preposterous. As they say in Propaganda, Jobs was "passing from the acceptable to the dubious" with product placement thinly veiled as cool minimalism.
- imsteve 19y ago
  Just look at what the college down to the first grade kids are doing these days.... disks are dead.
  - palish 19y ago
    Letting people rent movies on USB sticks may work. They could rent out several movies at a time, and you wouldn't need to keep track of them separately. They could also throw in a few random free movies, too. And since the sticks are ordered en masse, they'd probably pay for themselves within a short amount of time. It's something Blockbuster could try to stay in the game, at least.
    - dcurtis 19y ago
      Why? The internet is a much better and cheaper alternative, and it offers the enormous upside of instant gratification. Software might come on USB sticks for a while in the future, I think, but eventually even that will be delivered digitally. Valve has done this insanely well with Steam.

noonespecial 19y ago

Handbrake. Don't watch dvd's without it! Half of the new releases these days include copy protection "features" that make the super drive go bonkers when trying to play the disk. Far better to handbrake it and them just watch the files with VLC.