thomas fitzgerald.net

From High-Def Digest:

As a spokesman from Amazon says, Blu-ray was indeed huge. “As evidenced in our top-seller lists, Blu-ray format is very popular with our customers and several of our top-selling titles are selling more in Blu-ray than standard format.”

It was only a matter of time. I’d love to know how this compares to sale of download titles. I suspect they don’t even come close.
[Read Blu-ray Titles Outsell DVD Counterparts on Amazon | High-Def Digest]

Engadget has a poll on its website asking which is the best blu-ray player out there? Unsurprisingly the PS3 is currently in the lead. Way, way in the lead. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d ever consider anything else for playing blu-ray disks. With the bluetooth remote the PS3 does an amazing job, has fantastic picture quality and is a pretty good media centre too boot. Oh, and apparently it also plays games.

I really believe that there is a growing interest for blu-ray on the Mac. One of the things that leads me to suspect this is that the number one search term and link that is bringing people to this site at the moment is blu-ray. In particular Final Cut’s Blu Ray support. More and more people keep asking me: “when do you think the Mac will get blu-ray?” which is usually followed by “should I wait?” To be honest I doubt it will come this year. I suspect that when Apple does their widely rumoured Autumn Mac refresh, blu-ray won’t be on the cards (and John Gruber says so, so it must be true). I suspect that Apple’s primary focus will be keeping costs down for the holiday season, and although blu-ray burners are much cheaper than they used to be, they’re still more expensive than a normal superdrive. Unless they add it as a build to order option, I can’t see it coming before January.

Despite the fact that Apple is a member of the Blu-Ray Disk Alliance, it has up till now been somewhat reluctant to support the high definition format. With the release today of Final Cut Studio 3 Apple has finally decided to accept that Blu-Ray is something that its customers want. New in FCP 7 (or Final Cut Studio 3 – yes the numbering is confusing) is the ability to burn a Blu-Ray disk straight from Final Cut Pro itself, or from compressor. This is interesting because Apple’s disk authoring suite, DVD Studio Pro remains effectively untouched in this version and does not add Blu-Ray support. While this will probably be seen as controversial, I think this is a brilliant move from Apple.

Computerworld recently published an article suggesting that Apple’s decision to add an SD card slot to the Macbook and Macbook Pro range was the beginning of the end for the optical drive in Apple’s laptop range. I strongly disagree however. I don’t think the optical drive is going anywhere anytime soon. Every time Apple does something different people start looking for hidden meaning and conspiracies to their decisions, and the recent addition of the SD slot is no exception. When it was discovered that you could boot from the slot these theories jumped into over-drive with people suggesting that the next version of OS-X will be shipped on SD card. Of course the far more logical reasoning for the SD card slot and the decision to add it should be taken at face value, that Apple is simply making it easier for people with digital cameras to access their memory cards without requiring a third party reader. Given that the majority of PC laptops have shipped with card readers for some time, it would seem logical that Apple are simply giving in to consumer demand, rather than developing some super secret strategy to replace the DVD.

Just a thought. How is it Sony can get Blu-Ray into an $880 Laptop, but Apple, whose cheapest laptop is $999 claims that the licensing is too expensive for consumers? (And before you say anything, Sony has to pay licensing fees just like anyone else) Sony aren’t the only ones either. In the current Argos catalogue (if you’re not from the UK or Ireland, just google it) there are several blu-ray equipped desktops for under €800. Mind you, I don’t think anyone that follows the technology ever seriously believed the “bag of hurt” comment anyway, but it’s time Apple.

Finally

From The Guardian:

Sales of high-definition Blu-ray discs hit a new high in the run-up to Christmas despite the recession, the British Video Association said today.

About 1.5m were sold in Britain during December, up almost 400% on the same period in 2007, taking the total for the year to 3.7m.

For all those out there who are still trying to convince themselves the format is doomed, reality would seem to disagree. What’s more, despite the problems with the high street retailers in the run up to Christmas (i.e. Zavvi and Woolworths) and the economic down turn it would seem consumers want their HD: