Why Apple won't do Blu-Ray

[Robert Lane]

As many have suspected, Apple's real reason for not wanting to support Blu-Ray wasn't because of so-called "licensing" issues (both Adobe and Roxio somehow dealt with it) but simply that Apple doesn't make money on any optical media. They make money on iTunes and they want all their FCS users to push out their content to the iTunes store. Eventually.

Read this:

Movie Fans Can Buy & Rent Films in High Definition on the iTunes Store

[Andy Wilkinson]

This has been discussed many times on many forums....but I suspect you're right. Rumours (see e.g. Macrumours) suggest that FCS3 will be announced in late April (at NAB). I guess if they go with FCS3 without Blue Ray it will confirm this "marketing strategy" for sure.

Time will tell but, for now, I and my clients don't need or want Blue Ray. Not sure that will be the case in 12 months time but there are several good and cost effective other ways of delivering HD when required.

[David Knaggs]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

... there are several good and cost effective other ways of delivering HD when required.

I've heard good things about the WD media player as one possible alternative to Blu-Ray delivery. When I do training videos for corporate clients (so far only in SD DVD), one of the vital things is the menu structure. After a student watches the DVD for the first time, they often return to it later, but only want to zero in on a specific section and don't want to be fast-forwarding too much or hunting around. So an extensive menu structure (menus and sub-menus) is a must.

Does anybody know if there's any way of embedding a menu structure into a media player like the WD?