A Lack of Blu-ray
I wish I could remember where I read it, but a few years ago, during the peak of the HD DVD/Blu-ray kerfuffle, someone made the point that it was likely Microsoft was supporting the less popular HD DVD because ultimately it was betting on digital video delivery and a format war that left consumers wary of physical media would buy some more time until that sort of thing was a reality. Anyway, it’s stuck with me and I was reminded of it today reading John Gruber’s response to what apple should do with Apple TV, which includes a suggestion to add Blu-ray. Gruber replies:
That would be nice. (I bought a PS3 just for use as a Blu-ray player; I would have bought a new Blu-ray equipped Apple TV instead if there were one.) But: Apple seems to have made a decision to ignore Blu-ray across the board, at least for now. Apple’s answer for HD movies is the iTunes Store.
Which is funny, because when I read the specs for the new widescreen iMac I was very surprised it didn’t include one, but this makes sense. Not that it’s a nice thing, mind you. This is likely one of those examples of Apple being evil and getting away with it, which is fine, I get how business works, but let’s at least call a spade, a spade.
Hi, I'm 
Microsoft has been the betting the hell out of digital distribution ever since they revamped xbox live for the 360.
I’m kind of annoyed by how good Blu-Ray is. My favorite film is 2001 and there is simply no better way to view it than Blu-Ray, but I don’t have a PS3 and to download it would be 40 gigs. My poor Macbook cannot even play that back at full speed.
Nobody really minds the lower quality of xvid/divx/h264 files/streams over a blu-ray disc either since the expectation is not set very high, and consumption is nearly instantaneous. Are people still buying seasons of tv shows on dvds or geting them online (itunes/hulu) instead?
The bet seems like a good one to me.
I wouldn’t call the idea that things need to get smaller/faster/better a myth, but Blu-ray seems to me to be an interesting case of the classic thing they teach marketing students – if you build a better mousetrap it doesn’t guarantee that you will become the mousetrap king because it could be that people are just fine catching mice the old fashioned way.
We all know there is audiophile equipment out there that will make open up hidden richness in our music collection. We all know Blu-ray is going to make video look great. But when we trade everything off (cost of equipment, speed of download etc) I wonder if it’s turned out that for many of us “good enough” is good enough?
No doubt Apple has an agenda, and no doubt it’s not altruistic, but ultimately it might be backing the right horse.
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=p