Anyone who thinks Blu Ray is going to be dead in the next few years due to downloading in the next few years is crazy. Optical drives has at least 10 years to go in the market place. In the US internet infrastructure sucks. There are some towns still on Dial Up and there is not plans for upgrades in the areas. I was looking at a Vudu the other day and it was $200 plus $2.99 a rental, which isn't cost effective at all compare to Netflix. 

Bill Gates has his comments because HD-DVD failed just like Vista.

Pulling in Words from DownUnder, Where gaming Event tracker Beamed in Following info:Japanese electronics firm Sanyo has announced a new type of blue laser diode, which it said could double the capacity of existing Blu-ray discs to 100GB.. 
Although still under development, Sanyo claimed that the new laser could support drives that can write to Blu-ray discs at 12x speed over four layers of 25GB each.

Current Blu-ray recorders can write at speeds of around 6x, with some 8x burners due out soon.

However, with a write speed of 12x this means the drive would have an effective writing speed of 432Mbps, allowing a 100GB disc to be filled in under 10 minutes.

The biggest current drawback is that, in order to be able to write to four layers instead of two as is the case today, the new beam emits 450mW, nearly double the 250mW from existing lasers.

Further development and the need for approval from the Blu-ray Disc Association means that drives sporting the breakthrough diode could be a few years away yet, but Sanyo hopes products will be available before 2011
STeWie Drashek


Bluray is expensive and is actually very hyped

Blu-ray massive infiltration to the market is expected to be late...if something better does not come out until then of course 

Only the PS3 fanboys are making a big noise about it trying to make it look more famous

Apple know for luxury looking computer and kind of expensive, He knew if he decide to put blu-ray drive in computer the result will be rocket-up price. I think he wait for right time for blu-ray price get lower but I think it is ridiculous because I haven't see any lower price on Apple computer yet. Still I concern it is luxury. Indeed, Blu-ray will blow you away with sharp crisp detail graphic when you use 1080P TV. The price on movie disc of Blu-ray kind of ridiculous too. I believe it will drop down in few years when more people purchase player and disc. Let rich people buy first to reduce the cost. oh boy.

Apple have had a pretty good history of making calls as to what will work and what won't. (as much as I hate their smug attitude)

I'm not going to pay thousands of dollars to get HDMI gear for my home theatre right now - just so I don't get downscaling.

I think that Bill Gates had excellent thoughts on media formats - its not about the format (HD DVD / Blu ray etc.), its about the content. 


As the late great Bill G said, all optical disk formats will be dead in a couple of years. Delivery of content by internet and storage on flash / ssd / multi tb disks will be the norm.

Why pay for anything else?

Not much better than DVD???? Are you mad??? I think you need a bigger screen mate and an HD audio capable receiver, on my 96 inch projector screen Blu Rays blow the pants off DVD.....so to speak....

How can people not see why Apple don't want to add BluRay into the Mac.

iTunes store. Why bother allowing you to go out and buy a BluRay movie when Steve can sell you a download of the same content in iTunes where he makes more money and then you play back through your lovely AppleTV, which you put under every TV in the house.

It has absolutely nothing to do with cost or licensing.

Its the fashion nowadays for any criticism not to be answered but returned with a "you're just as bad". ('scuse me but we've got 3 more weeks of Presidential campaigning to go...its wearing....sigh....). Jobs complaints probably translate to the following....

-- I'd have to add another couple of hundred bucks to my already premium (over?) priced products
-- I'd have to add a ton of crap to OS-X that would not only saddle us with a tone of NRE costs but turn our system into Vista.

So he's just saying "There isn't a business case for this". If Sony desperately wants to add BluRay drives to Apple systems then they're going to have to make it worth Apple's while, not the other way around.

....and speaking as someone who bought a laptop that had a 'free' BluRay drive its one of the least useful accessories a computer system can have.

Steve is right, Blu-ray drives just aren't worthwhile for most users yet. Chances are the DVD read/write speeds are slower, and the one feature nearly every owner could use, the ability to burn to affordable Blu-ray media, isn't an option yet.

With no Blu-ray your only official HD source is the 'iTunes' store (or whatever the movie based money sink is called).

While the drives are quite costly, the real reason is to push Apples own HD content down your throat and out of your backside.

Steve only likes it when he can be the one ripping people off. See the price of the new "premium" laptops. $1299 for 2GHz/2GB/120GB/13"?? Seriously? In an economic downturn? Good luck with that...

Hey Steve! You do realize that if you remove that fruit logo from your laptops, you can add in a Blu-Ray drive and the consumer wouldn't have to pay a dime extra for the "Apple Image" tax.

Or you could just buy a ThinkPad x500 with Blu-Ray + HW Acceleration via AMD HD3500 instead for the same price.

Is "chief Apple" Steve Jobs seriously concerned at the huge cost of Blu-ray Disc players on Apple's products?

While being seemingly generous by not "burden[ing] our customers with the cost" of Blu-ray devices, there is no "complex" licensing on the rest of the components Apple ships as a finished unit packaged in yellowing plastic / scratchable aluminium. So how does he plan on justifying *that* cost to consumers?



jeeeeeeez talk about the kettle callin the frying pan !!!!!

" but the licensing is so complex,"

"We're waiting until Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the cost of the drives"

since when has the fruity shiny toy maker had a problem with rippin his fanboys off ???? i thought it was compulsory lol :O)

I hate saying it, but this is one case he is right. Until Blue Ray movies come down to earth in price, most people will stay away. I only have 5 Blue Ray movies and those are the freebies that came with my PS3. Sure they look nice, but not much better than any standard DVD once up converted by ironically my PS3. Nothing nicer than taking a gun to ones foot eh?