Apple and Blu-ray support still MIA

[RangerSix]

At Macworld 2005, with a Sony FX1 in hand, Steve Jobs announced that 2005 was the “Year of High Definition Video”.

Blu-ray Disc Association Welcomes Apple to Its Board of Directors
CUPERTINO, California—March 10, 2005—The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced that Apple® will become a member of the consortium’s Board of Directors. Apple has been a leader in driving consumer adoption of DVD authoring since January 2001, with the introduction of its SuperDrive™, the industry’s first high-volume CD- and DVD-burning drive, and its revolutionary iDVD® and DVD Studio Pro® software applications. Apple is also helping bring High Definition (HD) to market with a complete line of HD content creation tools for consumers and professionals alike including iMovie® HD, Final Cut® Express HD and Final Cut Pro® HD editing software.

Additionally the next release of Apple’s QuickTime® software, QuickTime 7, will feature the MPEG developed H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) which has been adopted for high definition DVDs. Apple will release QuickTime 7 in conjunction with the release of Mac OS® X version 10.4 “Tiger,” the fifth major version of Mac OS X that will ship in the first half of 2005.

“Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Association board as part of our efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Consumers are already creating stunning HD content with Apple’s leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high def DVDs.”

“Apple has a long history of technical innovation around DVD hardware and software, and their support of the Blu-ray Disc format is a testament to their commitment of ongoing innovation. The Blu-ray Disc format provides the immense capacity and the revolutionary functionality that Apple’s loyal customer base will be sure to enjoy,” said Maureen Weber, chief BDA spokesperson and general manager of HP's Optical Storage Solutions Business. “We’re thrilled about Apple joining our 16-member board, and we look forward to working with them on the development and promotion of the Blu-ray Disc format.”

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html

Now, fast forward to Macworld 2008 and amazingly Apple has yet to integrate a single BD device/drive or developed a single piece of software capable of burning digital video to Blu-ray. Affordable consumer/prosumer high-definition camcorders have been on the market for over three years, and yet it’s still impossible for Apple users to burn home video recordings to BD media. One has to go to third-party vendors for burners and software (i.e. Adobe Premiere Pro) to be able to accomplish that. For those of us using Final Cut Studio, to go this long without any decent means to transfer/burn our content to high definition media is disappointing and simply unacceptable.

So what happened? What's the hold up? Is there something that I am missing?

Super-thin notebooks and new download schemes are nice, but let’s not lose sight of commitments made in the past. Apple, a lot of us are still waiting for you. I'm tired of downgrading my HD video to SD.