At today’s Apple Notebook keynote event, Steve Jobs was asked about Blu-ray and stated “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.” Phil chimed in with “We have the best HD movie and TV options in iTunes.” Honestly, it seems that Apple wants to control media distribution. BD is getting too big to ignore, and Steve Jobs complains about the complexity of BD licensing. This smells like a ploy to get the masses to believe in the superiority of the ‘far less than BD-quality’ AppleTV HD rental scheme.
Currently you can’t ‘pay once for unlimited HD viewing’ and the quality is not much better than DVD. 720p on Apple TV is no where near BD quality. And we highly suspect they never want the user to pay only once for HD content. That’s why Jobs is downplaying and ignoring BDs growth among enthusiasts. Even 5 years into iTunes you still can’t download lossless tracks and now he expects us to believe AppleTV HD is really HD. Sorry Jobs, you are just this generation’s PT Barnum. You might have your followers but the vast majority of consumers see through your bag of tricks.
