MCE's 8x internal Blu-ray burner for Mac Pros now shipping, great for anything but playing Blu-ray movies
[Via Macworld]
[Via Macworld]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bozster @ Apr 10th 2009 2:32AM
Courtesy of Apple's closed up platform.
Pavelz @ Apr 10th 2009 3:05AM
Blu ray is a bag of hurt
Digby @ Apr 10th 2009 5:22AM
It just works!
DrXym @ Apr 10th 2009 5:33AM
I don't get why no 3rd party hasn't stepped up to supply what Apple could but won't. There are quite a few different solutions on Windows after all.
WebDev511 @ Apr 10th 2009 10:47AM
Maybe there still aren't enough blu-ray drives in Macs for a third party to justify the time and money required to implement it? No doubt they've got a number they're looking for, but they haven't seen it get there yet.
DrXym @ Apr 10th 2009 3:43PM
Macs all have USB drives and some like the Mac Pro take SATA drives. It should be possible right now for a Mac owner to buy such a drive and make it work. At least it would be if the software were there to support it. There is no competition for playback software either which should be incentive enought for somebody to step up and charge whatever they like for it. If the Windows can have at least 3 or 4 solutions then the Mac is at least deserving of 1.
Level 5 @ Apr 10th 2009 8:09AM
Eh... this is what VLC is for guys, just give it a little time.
Chris D.(PSN: Aggie_CEO | XBL:The Aggie CEO | Steam: Aggie_CEO @ Apr 10th 2009 10:06AM
well thats just crazy. What is Apple waiting on??
Eric @ Apr 10th 2009 12:01PM
As Steve Jobs said, in his "bag of hurt" comment last Fall, the licensing is a mess. In fact, Sony has just redone the licensing thing for Blu-ray, so that it's much easier to do and less expensive. Now you only have to license something once with a standardized licensing organization rather than two.
So I'm hoping this is the end of Apple's reluctance.
But the better news is that Pioneer makes a $230 8X Blu-ray burner that's really good and works perfectly in Mac Pros. But you need a converter to connect the Mac Pro's IDE connector to the SATA drive. I found one for $18 (on sale, normally about $24) and so I will have a Blu-ray burner soon as my primary drive, and I'll take my current SuperDrive and pop it in the second bay.
Now I can take HD videos from my TiVO HD and move them over to my Mac Pro (using Toast 9 with it's $20 Blu-ray plug-in I got for free for buying early) and have them for a long time to play in my Blu-ray player. I don't care about playing Blu-ray movies on my Mac. My 34" Sony HDTV is better than my 23" Cinema Display, and the TV chair is more comfortable than my computer chair.
xemumanic @ Apr 10th 2009 1:30PM
The worst thing about the day Steve said his whole 'bag of hurt' comment is that was the same day he'd just finished showing off the new line of Macs, that all included Nvidia GPUs that could handle all the heavy lifting for Blu Ray on their own.
All OS X Needs if the software, that's it. The real reason Apple doesn't do it is because they don't want it competing with iTunes. Its plain to see.
DrXym @ Apr 10th 2009 3:46PM
It can't be that much of a bag of hurt seeing as there are already a choice of software players for Windows.
3dpenguin @ Apr 10th 2009 10:07AM
Well you might be waiting a long "indeterminant time" for Apple support of BD, they may have been early supporters of the technology but they are now securly in the D/L content corner, especially when you consider the fact that as a burning Technology BD only has one thing going for it, capacity. Its far more costly GB per GB than DVD and just having a BD-R burner doesn't give you the ability to publish your movies, atleast not legally, because you don't have the publishing licences required by BDA, when it comes to transporting content if you have to opt for optical media, even though flash memory and hard discs are the perfered options, you can just dump the sorce material into smaller chunks onto DVD as data files and save yourself a couple bucks per 25GB content transfered.
Note: 25GB in DVD will be between $2 (6x 4.7 SL DVD) and $3.50 (3x 8.5 DL DVD) vs a BD average of $5 for either type of BD-R, 50GB BD-R average around $10 each but would be the same storage as 25GB which averages $5 each, thus the reason why they have the same storage value. Secondary if you went with 50GB discs you would be saving around $7 (11x SL DVD) and $3.50 (11x DL DVD) just breaking up the data into chuncks.
3dpenguin @ Apr 10th 2009 10:10AM
The 11x DL DVD should have been 6x DL DVD
3dpenguin @ Apr 10th 2009 10:09AM
The 11x DL DVD should have been 6x DL DVD.
3dpenguin @ Apr 10th 2009 10:12AM
I have no clue why Engadget requires me to click the reply button twice to reply to a comment, you think I would have learned by now though.
domerdel @ Apr 10th 2009 12:21PM
Why not get a cheap LG BD burner, and take off the end lip on the tray? might be some work but it will save you $200
Spinfusor @ Apr 13th 2009 4:52PM
That's what I did.
$179.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136155
mitchelljd @ Apr 10th 2009 12:30PM
Apple is stonewalling Blu-Ray not because of the licensing fees, that is a scapegoat.
They are not allowing BD's because they don't want BD movies to take hold on macs. pretty aweful if you ask me. They are doing it to protect their iTunes video store, which is kind of sad because poeple would still rent movies on it, but alot of people have blu-ray movies they want to watch on their Macs... including laptops.
Apple, it's time... seriously!!! Support Blu-Ray properly!!! I ain't buying a new mac unless it can playback a BD movie.
Video Master 2 @ Apr 11th 2009 2:27PM
I love my mac, but I could care less about blu ray at this point. Its still a technology that has been slowly adopted by the masses. Its like owning a beta machine before the vcr came out. And who wants to pay $30 for a blu ray movie? You HAVE to be joking!
Brian Kaempen @ Apr 11th 2009 11:03PM
Thank you Engadget for showing the Mac some...love?...maybe attention is a better word, but you should clarify something that frankly everyone should already know whether a fan of Macs or PCs and that's that Apple is broken down into separate divisions. Sure on rare occasions like with the iPhone launch, personnel wil be taken from one division to another, but other than that, they're completely different entities. The iTunes engineers are not the Pro Apps engineers and they're not the hardware designers. The Final Cut Studio developers COULDN'T (not could BTW) care less about iTunes. Us pros are going to need BR soon, I mean look at Adobe. I know many pros who are turning to Encore for their Mac BD authoring. This drive is nice for Mac users who would rather spend a couple extra bucks and get a drive guaranteed to work rather then Frankenstein one together.
-Brian