Apple may introduce Blu-ray equipped Macs

And they also support HD DVD. (edit: At least with Software)

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[Post edited by Clinic on Jan 3, 2008]

Where have you seen that Apple supports HD DVD too? I thought they were only supporting Blu Ray so far. I hope you are right and they support both, a dual format drive would be nice!

Apple doesn't support HD DVD, just blu.

http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/partners.html

That's not true. Apple has never supported HD DVD. They have been a BDA Board of Directors member from the beginning.

http://www.hddvdprg.com/eng/about/member.html

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_information/Section-14009/Index.html

This doesn't mean Apple may not choose to include a duel format drive in their product line though.

i dont care about apple, but i read this not too long ago.

Quote:
However, Shaw does say that there's a small possibility of Apple picking a hybrid drive just to stay clear of the format wars. Rumors of the drives come alongside word of a major overhaul of the Mac Pro internals, so it seems like the timing is right, but we'll really never know until Steve takes the stage and starts clicking us through the keynote.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/03/apple-bringing-blu-ray-macs-to-macworld/

A few years ago Apple got burned when they supported cartridge-based DVD-RAM as an expensive addon, and 6 months later no body sold media....

Also, Apple is part of the DVD consortium, so its my understanding they have some support in HD DVD. They also fully supported HD DVD in their last DVD Studio edition but not Bluray if I recall (it was pretty funny seeing they were an advertised member of Bluray).

dguisinger, Sony is part of the DVD Consortium as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Studio_Pro

This is an apple product. It is support. They're riding the fence similar to most out there.

Sure Apple may be "supporting" both in DVD Studio, but it IS an obligation considering that the software is supposed to be multi-faceted for industry purposing. I would easily be more shocked if it didn't incorporate both. If it were a casual program, like iDVD, then I could understand excluding the new formats, but seeing as Apple MAY be including Blu-Ray drives now, I could see that changing swiftly.

I guess I'm one of few that's not terrified or in denial over this news. I don't post here (or anywhere) very much for a reason, anything and everything triggers a firestorm.

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Sure Apple may be "supporting" both in DVD Studio

They don't support both in DVD Studio. Only HD DVD. No Blu-ray support. And the HD DVD support is sans-iHD although there are rumors that will be added in the next version.

Apple is on both the HD DVD and Blu-ray boards and despite not being very vocal about support for either the rumor that Apple is about to release Blu-ray equipped Macs has been circulating since before Blu-ray hit the market. So have rumors of the same with HD DVD drives, options for both and even HD DVD/Blu-ray combo drives as a standard feature. Take this rumor with a grain of salt. Apple is about due to put a next-gen drive in their higher-end Macs but my money would be on the HD DVD or Blu-ray options or the combo drives if they can get the price down.

Also it remains to be seen if the drives packaged in the computer would burn HD DVD or Blu-ray media as well. I'm willing to bet that the plan is HD DVD/Blu-ray player - DVD CD burner combos in the lower end Macs and HD DVD/Blu-ray/DVD/CD burners in the higher end Macs when the prices are low enough.

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[Post edited by the_dvd_chef on Jan 3, 2008]

The other thing is last i heard, Leopard didnt include HD DVD (or Bluray) support.
I dont remember if the codec list is identical or not but I know they definately dont hold any microsoft codec licenses....but its telling that a 3 month old OS doesn't support it when there are plenty of addon drives. There also havent been any OS seeds with any visible playback support for HD DVD or Bluray....

So...what good is it to include drives?

The only playback support they have is in DVD Studio for HD DVD discs authored within DVD Studio, which as someone else mentioned isnt full HD DVD spec.

HD playback is a huge feature normally Apple doesn't update OS features between major releases.

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[Post edited by dguisinger on Jan 3, 2008]

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The only playback support they have is in DVD Studio for HD DVD discs authorized within DVD Studio, which as someone else mentioned isnt full HD DVD spec.

This is kinda, true and false. HD DVDs that are made in DVD Studio Pro comply to the HD DVD spec and play fine in stand-alone players. I have made several HD screeners of short films recently using DVD Studio Pro which were shown in small theaters on an HD projector via an A3 player with no problems. DVD Studio Pro simply lacks the ability to create iHD content for these discs.

No, i ment that they don't support authoring or playing full spec, only partial.

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No, i ment that they don't support authoring or playing full spec, only partial.

The HD DVD spec does not require discs to have iHD content, it's optional. Although all major releases seem to use iHD content so far.

HD DVD has different 'specs' like Blu-ray's 1.0 and 1.1, difference is that all of the specs were finished before the format was launched and all are required for players, however all are not required for authoring. DVD Studio Pro supports HD DVD 1.0 which has capabilities similar to regular DVD but with HD resolution and the newer compression codecs. iHD is in HD DVD 2.0 or something like that, I forget the actual version number.

Yes, i totally understand this.....I was saying Apple hasn't developed a full playback engine...they dont have the HDi or all of the codecs. I know the discs they author will play in players, I'm saying it doesn't work the other way around at this time.