According to reliable sources over at The Boy Genius Report, the ninth version of iTunes will have some nice new features. The first of these rumored features says that iTunes will be receiving Blu-ray support finally, despite some of Apple’s (or should I say Steve’s) comments in the past. This isn’t the first time Apple Blu-ray has been rumored, but it seems a little more plausible now that HD DVD has had some time to fade away.

Remember the days when you had to fight for those around you to buy a DVD player to replace those blasted VHS players? You likely stressed how much better the resolution on DVD would be. Or perhaps your experiences was more about storage instead of playback. Maybe you were trying to get others to switch from CD to DVD, or something similar. This is, of course, a result of its superior storage space. Blu-ray is no different, and FastMac would like to help your Mac recognize or even burn BluRay discs.

It seems that Apple’s iTunes 8.2 may have support for Blu-ray as indicated here by the screenshot of the About screen from 9to5Mac. The support may just be Gracenote support though. This doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, though, as iTunes would be able to identify a Blu-ray disk but not be able to actually play it back.

The Macbook line got a major refresh today, but one thing did not appear: the Blu-Ray capable optical drive. Not as an option, not to burn, and not even to play the newly-crowned winner of the DVD high def format wars. And after Steve Jobs’ comment that Blu-Ray is a “bag of hurt,” we probably shouldn’t plan on seeing such a thing any time soon.

And there are a lot of good reasons (from the perspective of Apple, anyway) why the company shouldn’t be in a rush to adopt it…