iTunes 8.2 beta points to Blu-ray
During a visit to Sam’s Club last Friday, I was reminded that Apple was an early backer of Sony’s next generation optical disc technology. A looped video demo (copyright 2006) on a flatscreen TV prominently listed the Cupertino, CA-based computer and widget maker. Since then, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said he viewed Blu-ray as “a bag of hurt” and not worth supporting — that stance may be about to change.
Among a host of others, Engadget has noted the arrival of iTunes 8.2, which was seeded to developers yesterday along with iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4. Engadget reported:
[The] previously-empty “Store” settings pane [is] now populated, and it’s mega-boring; all it does is allow you to sign in and out of your iTunes account, and while signed in, there’s an Account Info button that lets you get booted out to an unstyled web page where you can view and edit your credit card information and the like. On the iTunes 8.2 side of things, we noticed that … the Gracenote legal mumbo jumbo in the About window now specifically calls out both DVD and Blu-ray metadata, which we’re taking as a promising sign of playback support in the not-too-distant future.
Blu-ray, shmu-ray.
Sony’s next generation optical disc technology has been coming for years and still hasn’t truly arrived. It defeated HD DVD in an extended, multi-year battle for format domination, but high player and media costs have kept it out of the mainstream—negatives that won’t be overcome this or perhaps even next year.
Thereupon, I can’t say that it’s absence on the Mac has meant anything for me. The future of “high-def to go” movies and television is broadband and handheld devices, not yet another large, easily damaged optical disc…
What’s your take?
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April 30th, 2009
Blu-ray discs are getting cheaper and cheaper, and with HD camcorders becoming the norm a blu-ray burner is much needed. I don’t think harddrive space/price is where it needs to be yet for the the size of HD content. I’ve been buying blu-ray discs now for about a year and love the quality, I also have a HD camcorder that I would love to burn to discs, but I am waiting to convert from pc to mac until native blu-ray support is added.
I still think general population will adopt a tangible disc format over streaming/downloading, we’re years away from that.