Have been watching AppleTV for over a year now. The HD-ready films look brilliant on my flatscreen - you'd hear a difference between that and a Blu-ray version (if they bothered to do a good transfer, not always the case), but you wouldn't see a difference. I have tried, and there isn't one. But if I had a 65" plus flatscreen, I'd consider Blu-ray a benefit.

However, the sheer and complete convenience of watching downloaded movies, a minute after I have pressed buy, completely trumps messing about with buying the discs. Sorry, can't be bothered to. I can download the same movie 7-8 times for what a Blu-ray version would cost me, and for what? I have hundreds of DVDs boxed up in the loft, and definitely don't intend to have rows of BD covers in my listening room - where there aren't many CDs either, just my most recent purchases.

Blu-ray on disc is over. Blu-ray as download, however, will be provided over the net. As to prices on AppleTV, first release prices are always higher, until the films are made available as rentals a few weeks in.

sorry but I have both an AppleTV and a Blu-ray player and the picture of the blu-ray is much better.

First of alle the AppleTv doesn't support real 1080p. 1080p material is downscaled to 720p and then upscaled to 1080p for output because of the graficscard that is installed  

The next thing is that it only supports very low datarates. The datarate on the AppleTV is less than a third of the blu-ray while they both use the same codec. Especially in dark scenes the blu-ray offers a lot more details. Often you don't know that there is something till you saw a blu-ray

The next thing is the audio. The new formats are very good but the 5.1 or above PCM sound (uncompressed) on some blu-rays is just stunning.

You also only have one language when you download a video on blu-rays you always have several languages in different audio formats.

I only buy discs with french, english and german audio. 

You also shouldn't forget that the itunes store only offers videos in the US. Also a lot of people don't have an internet connection that supports downloading so much data. 

I think we will download high definition material in the future but at the moment there is no equivalent to blu-ray because of the high quality and the data. Just remember most blu-rays have more than 25GB on them. When using the PCM audio they have app. 50GB!

At the moment I have 174 Blu-rays and every single one is worth the price I payed. I think the most expensive one was Batman the Dark Knight for what I payed 30€.

Well, as you can see above, I do make a distinction for the audio. WHEN the movie companies do a good transfer, and there are lots of inferior BD transfers, then you get excellent sound - but that means they have to go back to the original mix, which they often don't bother with. So it's worth listening out for that. New releases don't have this problem as much.

With a large enough screen, you'll see that BD has greater detail, also in dark areas, and sometimes in highlights. But when full-HD is shown on screens up to 50" size, then you don't distinguish between HD-ready and Full-HD. There are numerous, numerous studies that show this to be the case.

The proviso is that you're at a normal viewing distance when doing the comparison, and not standing 30cm away from your screen.

Tim:

sorry but I have both an AppleTV and a Blu-ray player and the picture of the blu-ray is much better.

First of alle the AppleTv doesn't support real 1080p. 1080p material is downscaled to 720p and then upscaled to 1080p for output because of the graficscard that is installed  

The next thing is that it only supports very low datarates. The datarate on the AppleTV is less than a third of the blu-ray while they both use the same codec. Especially in dark scenes the blu-ray offers a lot more details. Often you don't know that there is something till you saw a blu-ray

The next thing is the audio. The new formats are very good but the 5.1 or above PCM sound (uncompressed) on some blu-rays is just stunning.

You also only have one language when you download a video on blu-rays you always have several languages in different audio formats.

I only buy discs with french, english and german audio. 

You also shouldn't forget that the itunes store only offers videos in the US. Also a lot of people don't have an internet connection that supports downloading so much data. 

I think we will download high definition material in the future but at the moment there is no equivalent to blu-ray because of the high quality and the data. Just remember most blu-rays have more than 25GB on them. When using the PCM audio they have app. 50GB!

At the moment I have 174 Blu-rays and every single one is worth the price I payed. I think the most expensive one was Batman the Dark Knight for what I payed 30€.

I completely agree with Tim. When everyone has a good enough internet connection and Apple TV provides movie downloads of full 30-50GB blu-rays i.e. exactly what you get when you buy a blu-ray disc, then downloads may take over. Having said that though, lossless audio hasn't exactly taken over. People seem content to play ridiculously compressed, low quality mp3s on their B&O equipment - it amazes me to find people on here who have Beolab 5 speakers, yet play mp3s from their ipod on their system. To me, this is blasphemy!!. So maybe most people will be content with services like Apple TV which only offer around a third the quality of a blu-ray in 720p with 5.1 sound. However, this sounds to me as something that goes against what B&O is all about - truth to the original source in terms of sound and picture. So it seems strange to me that people on this particular forum are content with feeding their high quality B&O with low quality source material. If you are into this then you may as well just stick to the mainstream brands which offer lower quality equipment to match lower quality sources.

I haven't made any difference between 720p and 1080p because I know that there is not much difference between these two with the screens you mentioned. But I have made a difference between blu-ray and the HD-movies apple has on the itunes store.

The main problem is that you don't get things back that have gone lost when reencoding at low datarate. The problem is that  a well encoded 720p file can be much better than a 1080p one with a low datarate.  The problem with the studies you mentioned is that they always where made with reference files and these files have datarates that are comparable to those of the blu-ray. I never said that 1080p is better than 720p because this depends on a variety of parameters (screen, scaler, interlaced, noninterlaced, bitrate, compression, .....). But I did say that streaming and downloading movies for example from the itunes store is not that good as it will be in 10 years because we need more discspace on computers (1TB = 20 movies in blu-ray quality), then we need the internet connections that support these large files. 

I think all this will take 10 years till it is really usable for costumers. When we look at the mp3 we will see how long it took till they where fully accepted. MP3 is accepted since really used by a large crowd since 2003-2005 and was invented in 1982 and announced in 1992

By the way the next standard will be ultra high definition and this also can be stored on the blu-ray because it can store up to 400GB on a single disc

Tying the discussion back to the original post, I just don't see B&O pursuing the blu-ray technology -- especially for a stand-alone player.

The statements by the new CEO indicate that B&O has learned from the mistakes of its past and will not be devoting its R&D to component devices such as HDR, DVD, or BD players. B&O just cannot keep up with the technology. By the time B&O can have such devices available, the technology is dated and the prices are far too high for the dated technology. The DVD1 is a perfect example. Once B&O finally had a dvd player to offer, the price was 10 times that of a third-party dvd player and offered no substantial benefits.

Also, B&O has clearly indicated that it sees the future being in digital media and not physical media. B&O will be embracing the move toward digital media and will be focusing on ways to make digital media more convenient and enjoyable in terms of distribution around the home and interface to provide the magic and elegance that we know and love from B&O.

It only seems logical that this will extend to video media as well as audio media. The big issue here will be that of format and DRM. Unlike audio (which is moving away from DRM for downloads) there are various proprietary formats for download and we have yet to see a standardized format for video purchase downloads.

i wish they'd had this new ceo years ago , he seems to be really down to earth and not pie in the sky like the last one

Esh:

Just took delivery of the Beovision 7-40 with Blu-Ray...can't wait to try out all these movies from Woolies!

I've spoken with B&O UK this morning that they have told us that the BV7-40 MKIV with Blu-ray is NOT shipping, has NOT been received by any customers and they do not even have a shipping date. It can't be ordered by dealers.

Unfortuantely you are either fibbing or you think you've received a model with Blu-ray.

Just a couple of observations.....

Downloaded content - er RAID, mechanical disk failures at the very least and a spare rack space for the power / cooling / backup devices. Solid state disks are STILL expensive.

Insurance, I know most (if not all?) insurance companies won't insure digital content.

Also one of the points of buying B&O is one remote, who wants to drag a keyboard / laptop out just to press play.

Hi All !

I have been contacted personally by Bang & Olufsen, who wish to confirm to all members and readers of BeoWorld, that the BeoVision 7-40" LCD with the inbuilt Blu-Ray Player is not being shipped at present, anywhere!

B&O are planning to make this version available in May this year, and owners of Mk3 with standard DVD players inbuilt will be able to buy an upgrade kit at some point in the future - no firm dates as yet.

Visually, the Mk3 player with Blu-Ray is identical to the current version.

More news as i get it!

Lee

I'm actually going to start a new thread with this..  hope nobody minds.

Lee

Tim:

sorry but I have both an AppleTV and a Blu-ray player and the picture of the blu-ray is much better.

First of alle the AppleTv doesn't support real 1080p. 1080p material is downscaled to 720p and then upscaled to 1080p for output because of the graficscard that is installed  

The next thing is that it only supports very low datarates. The datarate on the AppleTV is less than a third of the blu-ray while they both use the same codec. Especially in dark scenes the blu-ray offers a lot more details. Often you don't know that there is something till you saw a blu-ray

The next thing is the audio. The new formats are very good but the 5.1 or above PCM sound (uncompressed) on some blu-rays is just stunning.

You also only have one language when you download a video on blu-rays you always have several languages in different audio formats.

I only buy discs with french, english and german audio. 

You also shouldn't forget that the itunes store only offers videos in the US. Also a lot of people don't have an internet connection that supports downloading so much data. 

I think we will download high definition material in the future but at the moment there is no equivalent to blu-ray because of the high quality and the data. Just remember most blu-rays have more than 25GB on them. When using the PCM audio they have app. 50GB!

+1. There is a *massive* difference, in both audio and video quality, between iTunes Store HD content and Blu-ray. This will likely change, but not any time soon - the infrastructure required for convenient download of content with Blu-ray equivalent bitrates isn't there (certainly not in the UK or most of Europe) and won't be for a few years yet!  

That doesn't mean to say B&O should enter the Blu-ray market, of course. They'd be better off trying to get a digital product right.

The other problem is - as I've mentioned before - is that it's our American friends who are the keenest and most positive about downloads. However, they are also the guys with the most bandwidth. For the rest of the world, we're generally stuck with <8MB broadband, capped connections and much more. This means it's tricky to download HD movies.

Worse, they don't ship with uncompressed HD audio, which is a primary reason for HD movies. Why are we bothering with all this high-end audio equipment, to restrict our audio experience to compressed audio? What's the point of that?

you might get shocked when you here the bandwith available in Japan or Korea...

I know its not high brow but I watch Blurays played on the PS3 and Beovision 7

120 Mbps in Holland