[Felix]

Hi

I would like to get an idea whether an internal high-definition drive is something realistic in the near future.

I have seen Sony VAIOs equiped with such.

What is realistic and worth waiting/obtaining? HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, Combo?

Would those drives also burn such discs?

Is a HDMI-port a necessity then? (BTW - what about eSATA, is this an option or is FW800 the way to go?)

Kind regards

Felix

[PaperNotes]

Not until the middle of 2008 at least. They'll be Blu-ray drives. The cost right now is far too high even as a BTO option. Also Apple wants to make sure Apple TV is a success for downloading movies to so they're going to take their sweet time before they start officially building next gen drives in Macs.

[ibook_steve]

The Paramount announcement yesterday of HD-DVD only just complicates matters even more. Apple usually takes the stance of letting the others sort it out and then implementing the best technology. However, Apple does support Blu-Ray at this point. If hybrid Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives come down the line, that's what Apple would probably implement.

Steve

[mduell]

Bluray (and I think also HD DVD) laptop drives have been available for a while; Apple could drop them in any time they want.

Yes, the computer BR/HD drives generally (all?) also burn disks.

HDMI is not needed. eSATA is possible, but unlikely; Apple doesn't seem interested in it for low cost, high performance storage.

[wilsonng]

Adoption by the general public might be slower thanks to the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray format wars. Apple wouldn't be putting Blu-Ray drives into the iMacs and MacBooks immediately unless they could secure some great deals with the manufacturers.

The price of blanks are also not targeted for the general public or mass adoption yet.

Apple would probably put Blu-Ray into the high end Mac Pros first since they would generally by targeting folks who would benefit the most. These are the folks who need high capacity storage.... But with the cheap cost of hard drives, i'm not sure how it would fit in as a storage medium unless blanks were to drop considerably in price.

[kill bill]

also, the proliferation of downloading is such that these new formats might not take off as quickly as the dvd or cd did. There so much of a bootlegging industry in play that its really a 3 way format war. When they figure out how to rip blu-rays, its over.

[wilsonng]

well, prices dropped a little for external Blu-Ray drives.

IGM: OWC slims Blu-ray prices

Would there be a reason for you to want internal Blu-Ray in your laptop?

If it's just a way to show off to your friends that you can play Blu-Ray movies, I'd have to call this feature a yawner..... We can always play DVD movies since every movie that gets released in Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is also available in DVD format. The movie's extra features are the icing on the cake but not really needed.

I can also download movies from the iTunes Music Store or rip my personal DVD collection and play it on my hard drive either as an mp4 or VIDEO_TS folder.

If you're burning more than 8 GBs of data on to a Blu-Ray DVD blank, the cost of blanks are still too expensive to be a cost-effective form of data storage on the road. Better to buy an external hard drive... The cost per GB will be much cheaper.

I would rather wait for Blu-Ray to start achieving market saturation and get sale prices down to reasonable consumer levels. This is like the early days of DVDs.... I remembered a 1x DVD burner for $1,000 and blanks were $5 to $10 each.

[Super Mario]

Originally Posted by kill bill 

also, the proliferation of downloading is such that these new formats might not take off as quickly as the dvd or cd did. There so much of a bootlegging industry in play that its really a 3 way format war. When they figure out how to rip blu-rays, its over.

Can't see it. On torrent sites all the HD movie rips as so large I can't imagine anyone with a laptop hard drive having that many movies. It would take too long to download them and too much hassle to have such large data files filling up hard drives. It won't be as much as DVD piracy which is like on average 800MB divx files.

[Super Mario]

Originally Posted by wilsonng 

I would rather wait for Blu-Ray to start achieving market saturation and get sale prices down to reasonable consumer levels. This is like the early days of DVDs.... I remembered a 1x DVD burner for $1,000 and blanks were $5 to $10 each.

Naw man talk about stating the obvious.

[auxlepli]

I wouldn't get either one for the reasons listed at this site.
http://bluraysucks.com/boycott

[thetman]

found this but its tray loading and 12.5mm so two strikes against getting this in a 15" mbp

HD-DVD for laptop

[PaperNotes]

Originally Posted by thetman 

found this but its tray loading and 12.5mm so two strikes against getting this in a 15" mbp

HD-DVD for laptop

Must have been taken out of an ugly Toshiba.