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Blu-Ray Drive For Apple Notebooks
Sean Jackson writes "Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. It's pricey ($800), but you have to admit that burning 45 GB is pretty sweet. Here are technical specs. Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player. However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions."
However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions.
Perhaps, but it's purely speculation. There's a chance that OS X 10.5 will also come with a full installation of Windows Vista included in the box. Perhaps this means that Apple is planning on buying Microsoft.
See the problem with drawing conclusions from items that are pure speculation to begin with?
If the only problem is lack of software, does it work if you boot into Windows, I wonder?
Although, since all my HD movies are in the other format, it's kind of moot anyway. Mind you, some would say that about my not owning a MacBook, too.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Incredible. NOW the overpriced Blu-Ray drive is available in BOTH of your massive-selling flavors! MAC and PS3!
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Dell offers BluRay in their XPS and has done so for quite a while...
What the heck would you use this for? I doubt you're going to burn 45Gb while on the move, and for backup purposes HDs are way cheaper. Of course you need to rotate them, but then again I wouldn't expect a consumer-grade BR-W (sp?) to last longer than a couple of years.
Global warming is a cube.
I would be more interested in a SuperDrive that supports both HDDVD and BR
I'm not the parent poster (no really, I'm not) but it seems obvious to me that the mods (or mod) didn't get what the pp was saying. The article submitter makes a silly assumption based on an assumption and the poster merely points that out (10.5 MIGHT support playing the movies THEREFORE Apple MIGHT be offering BR drives).
you can buy external hardrives at about 30 cents a gig, on special, so 800 bucks is ~~ 2400 gig of hardrive, or about 53 bluray disks, assuming you can efficiently fill the disks at 45 gig each, neglecting the cost of the disk..
as usual, for early adopters YMWV (your mileage Will vary)
It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............ :-)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
For years, Mac buyers were troubled with a terrible choice:
-Get the base Mac with a CD reader; or
-Pay $200 more for the superdrive.
Often, the so called superdrive was behind the technology curve compared to a $50 PC equivalent.
I noticed that Apple did away with the Superdrive for a little while since it became too pathetic a choice, even for its dedicated customers. It seems that the Blu-Ray drive is giving Apple another chance at screwing its customers by charging 1-2 thousand dollars extra for something that will likely become standard for PC's within the next year.
Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents.
So I guess I won't beable to watch any movies with my brand new non-HDCP compatible 23" DVI monitor.
This is the first step to pirati^H^H^H legitimately downloading PS3 games because copyright law is BROKEN and like FUCK YOU GEORGE BUSH TAKE THIS!
All we need now is for someone to actually release some PS3 games and we're good to go!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
How long would it take to burn a 45GB disc? Blu-ray.com says 1x is 36Mbs, so that would be 4.5MB/s. 45GB is approximately 45000MB, so it would take about 10,000 seconds at max speed the whole way. So that's like what, 2 hours and 50 minutes? Not that bad for massive backup if you just start it when you go to bed.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
>> System administrators and database administrators can archive and retrieve large amounts of data on 1 convenient disk. Blu-ray is the next generation of storage technology and it's available today, only from Fastmac.
Really? Last I looked I can now get a terrabyte of hard disk space under 300 USD. If I want a terrabyte of RAID it will probably cost me 400 USD, maybe 500 USD. A terrabyte of blueray is 20 DVD's burning at 8x. Oh yeah I am going to pay 800 USD and 20x CD's + more time to do the same backup... Yeah that sounds like a plan!
CD's, DVD's are history for backing up purposes. Even the original intention of CD's for music is starting to become irrelevant. Times have changed.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Give me an external firewire option and I am on board.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies
20 years off
It says that it burns at 1x BD-R. How fast is this? I'll tell you, 4.5 MB/s. That means 10,000 seconds for a 45 GB disc. That's 166 minutes. That isn't slow, I guess, but it sure sounds slow.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
My problem is that I haven't seen where Apple has said that the future product line will use Blue-Ray. I would hate to buy one of these and find out in June that all the new high end mac are HD-DVD.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DYCWRSV&s=dhs
Yawn.
I don't respond to AC's.
Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. [. . .] Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player.
Yeah, they totally beat Apple to the punch of selling a product that the OS doesn't support at all. Hurp. It's not that Apple can't get hardware from vendors, it's that they have to implement the software side as well, which isn't very likely until the next big OS update. I mean, we're kinda at the end of the Tiger line, here, after all.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
How about a "SuperDrive" that doesn't support movies? Take away all the DRM-crap so it can't play them, make it cheap and I can use it for war^H^H^Hbackups.
I would be more interested in a SuperDrive that supports both HDDVD and BR
And I'd be more interested if OS 10.5 came with a real, live, spotted leopard in the box, but I guess we're both just going to have to learn to live with disappointment, won't we?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
On the PC side of the world, we've been enjoying various 3rd-party Blu-Ray drives and various third-party Blu-Ray video players for a year now.
As a Mac user, I'm rather disappiointed. But that's why I'm also a PC user - it helps me avoid disappointment when Apple decides to sit on the fence.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I want to see some very heavy results from independent testing labs that give me an idea that if I put data on such disks that it will be readable in at least 5 years @ 99.99% reliability.
If not, hard drives are way better as they read and write at far higher speeds.
Blu-ray support in Mac is a reasonable assumption. Apple buying Microsoft is not. What's the difference? The probability of it happening. You or a 5 year-old may think that probability can be reduced to "yes", "no" and "maybe", but actually it is a whole continuum of values between 0 and 1.
I hope the next MacBooks (specifically the 13.3" MacBookPro I've been whining for for a while now) has a BluRay option.
That'll make the version without the BluRay reader $200 cheaper, which works just fine for me.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
1) ICT (Image Constraint Token) will make the movie play at half resolution
2) Hollywood has agreed to not use ICT before 2012 at earliest if at all
3) ICT is per disc, so none of your current discs will be degraded in the future
Running around like chicken little saying the sky is falling, will have none if not the opposite effect. All you'll do is make normal people try it, see that you're wrong and think you're some sort of wierdo conspiracy crackpot. HDCP won't affect many, most won't notice it and for the technically savvy there'll probably be workarounds. That is if it's even relevant anymore since if AACS is broken.
* Note: AACS can't technically be broken as such, but if broad classes of devices are compromised to the point where the public backclash would be too great to revoke the key, it's de facto broken permanently.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I saw the mac, had some mod points and thought that i'd revenge myself for the rabid mods who down vote me every time i poo poo macs, no matter how logic, right, obvious, or stupid i may feel at the time that i click the submit reply button.
However, if this means that i could install a *cough* open source player to play blu-ray discs on a pc that wasn't crippled by drm issues *cough vista coughcough*, it might be worth my next laptop replacement.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
burning 45 GB is pretty sweet
If it's as slow as burning a DVD is, then not really. I gave up on optical media for backup long ago because it's just too slow. I just use an extra hard drive instead. Does anybody know if burning Bluray is any faster per GB than burning a DVD?
Penny - plain text accounting
Neglecting whatever increased power requirements the new optical drive might introduce, 2.5 hours is cutting it close for burning on a battery. Now certainly it's always possible to plug in when you're on the road, but if you have a socket nearby, an external hard disk can be plugged in too (or you can beat this by using a "self-powered" USB disk).
Not to mention that, at best, you could have ~3 Blu-Ray discs worth of data stored on your hard disk.
Okay, I can get a dual-layer DVD Burner for about seventy bucks currently, which means I can burn about 8 GB (or 18% of 45 GB) for less than one-tenth of the price--nearly twice as "cost effective."
Then you consider that I can buy the six dual-layer DVDs for about $1.50 each ($9 total), whereas a single "sweet-burnin'" dual-layer Blu-Ray disc (the kind you need to hold 45 GB) is gonna cost me at LEAST thirty bucks--four times as much for the same amount of data.
Hm. When you consider the trend, I think I can hold off for, say, two years when Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or whoever wins that war costs about what a dual-layer DVD burner costs now (and ditto for the discs).
Burning 45 GB onto just one disc will be "sweet," but for the nonce I can stand burning six d-l DVDs without laying out the $800 smackers (esp. since I've already bought the DVD burner with my latest notebook computer anyway).
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Sheesh, this was in Mac news about three weeks ago. Other World Computing had one listed for sale before March 16th./
$550 for a 2x BD-R internal drive. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Panasonic/SW5582BK
I would bet that Apple is going to force users to get Leopard/10.5 to be able to play retail movies like M$ did with Vista, and expect a crack a couple of months later.
Sony officially do not allow movies to playback on computing devices. Only standalone players are allowed to playback the Blueray format. PCs and Laptops can only use DATA BR and do not include the DRM required for movie playback.
HD-DVD *WILL* allow movie playback on PCs and laptops. Further more whilst there is a technical ability to do so HD-DVD has region locking off by default. Of course both systems have DRM. So here is the table - remember there is *no difference* in the quality of the movie on BR and HD-DVD - it's the space available for extra content that is the issue. Both HD-DVD and BR use the same set of bitrates for their HD video.
HD-DVD:
Capacity - 20 to 30GB
Movie quality HD
No region encoding.
DRM
Can play movies on PCs and Laptops
BR:
Capacity - 35 to 45GB
Movie quality HD
Region locked with anti-tamper and live updates.
DRM
*CANNOT* play movies on PCs and Laptops.
If you think I am just a HD-DVD zealot then try googling for this information and be amazed at what Sony does not like to be public. For me, not being able to play by HD movies on my PC is a show-stopper for BlueRay.
Cool, now I can add a 800$ drive to my 600$ Mac mini.
Ok, it's a Blu-Ray burner, but still.
HyperDrive? TrueBlue? Blueper drive? MoneyBurn?
I mean... Superdrive?
Where was common sense that DVD RW/DL drives will be a common thing couple of months later, back then when someone came up with THAT idea?
Now its like pointing out that your brand new digital watch has a calculator and calling it "A Com-pew-thoor".
But you can still hear Mac users calling it a Superdrive.
Mac user: My brand new Mac has a Superdrive.
Non-Mac user: Dude, it is called a DVD Recorder... They are like... 30$ or something now.
Mac user: A SUUUUUPPEERR-DRIVE!!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I could be completely wrong, I don't know Apple's stance but I'd imagine Apple just aren't ready to commit to Bluray yet, they're probably waiting for more mature drives that support both HDDVD and Bluray together or waiting for a more definitive winner in the format wars, right now it's just too early to take sides and I doubt Apple want the headache of producing/supporting systems that have either Bluray or HDDVD and not both in, I can see it now:
Customer: I bought this HD movie and it doesn't work in my drive can you help?
Apple: Sir, it's an HDDVD, you have a Bluray drive
Customer: But my Bluray drive is for HD isn't it?
Apple: Yes, but HDDVD and Bluray are different formats
Customer: But I want to be able to play HD movies!
Apple: *sigh*
At this point in time MacOS X does not have the necessary drivers for either HD-DVD or BluRay. I also don't see MacOS X gaining the necessary drivers until the delivery of Leopard, which is now slated for October. For this reason I don't see any chance of seeing Apple providing either drive as an option until then. At that point in time I would not be surprised that if the drives are offered, then it will be a build-to-order option, given the cost and the fact the competition between HD-DVD and BluRay is just hurting everyone.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
To be honest I can't see myself ever buying a Blu-Ray drive.
For one it is too expensive for the drive. $800. I can get a 500GB HDD for about 120 euros. Easier to store, no messing trying to find a disk. No DRM, no region messing.
It will (imho) go the way of the DAT tapes (niche market).
Hollywood also empahtically stated they would not abuse the DMCA. Congress believed them and now consumer rights and computer/electronic producer rights have been reduced to loose poo on a stick.
GP's claim is not fud.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Shouldn't this be from the "Who gives a Rat's A** Dept".
I'm assuming that as a condition of allowing Macs to play Blu-Ray disks, Sony will require Apple to make Leopard require all drivers to be digitally signed so that fake device drivers can't be used to break the DRM. Same reason as Vista 64.
I honestly hope that someone either builds a large quantum computer or finds a fast discrete logarithm algorithm soon before asymmetric encryption ruins consumer rights.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
I thought that apple was already in support of Blu-ray. Aren't they part of the BLU-man group or what ever sony is calling their consortium.
I no longer really consider physical media, at least for writing. Obviously, if it's included with a new Mac, then I'd get it. But otherwise, hard drives seem better, faster and cheaper. (Yeah, I know HDD are physical, but you know what I mean.)
You're right, it shouldn't be modified to 'troll'. It should be flamebait, as per the FAQ. Your second post should be the one modified as "troll". You're right, the mods really need to read up the rules before modding you down. Trust me when I say that in the future, I will make sure to mod you down using the correct moderation. Hopefully, using the link to the FAQ in this post as guidance, other moderators will mod you down appropriately as well.
I just checked their website and their drive for towers and desktops is under $500, so they are beating Newegg.com. Who is this company? Looks like a nice clean website...
It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............ :-)
'Ready' is a matter of requirements. I have no interest in BluRay movies, but I'd love a 45GB burner for backing up raw DV data. Hard drives are too expensive, fragile, and big for that. For archival stuff, if a BluRay blank is under $15, it's cheaper than a reliable hard drive backup.
I'm still not buying at $600, but when they hit $199 next spring, I'm definitely buying one.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So, HDs have space /and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).
.DV archives on this system wouldn't be cost effective - I'd much rather store them on BluRay.
If you get a good enclosure they're closer to $40, then you need at least two of them for RAID, you need controllers to drive them - if that's USB you're stuck at slow rates, if it's e.SATA you have expensive controllers and/or port limitations. Now you need to handle hot-swapping effectively for hard drives which takes some admin experience or an expensive hard drive shelf.
I use hard drives for my business's backups, but the cheapest I can do today is $1.38 per GB if I want two copies off-site (I don't trust a single old HD spindle to work next year), with hot-swap and e.SATA. I'm not even counting the cost of the computer which needs to have enough PCI slots to handle the e.SATA cards, and that's with el-cheapo cards, not 3Ware or anything dense, plus I have to admin the linux RAID-10 setup.
Now, what I get for my trouble is versioning for 6 months (rsnapshot) and instant random-access to my backups, so in my judgement it's worth it. But storing old
Gosh, maybe I don't have to chose between the two options!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's what the FAQ says about flamebait: "Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait." My comment was intended to amuse and educate, not to insult or enrage.
Therefore, it should be neither Troll nor Flamebait. The most appropriate moderation is no moderation whatsoever, because it's not really worthy of any moderation. But the second-most appropriate is "Informative" because I am correcting someone's error.
You're hoping that other moderators will be as undiscerning as yourself?
Welcome to my foes list for your abuse of the system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe what you meant to say is 45GB.
Posting just to spell check someone is generally considered insulting the person you're correcting. So yes, flamebait is correct. Pointing out the difference between GB and Gb on a tech site is like explaining the difference between iodized salt and kosher salt to a chef, so it is not informative whatsoever. There is nothing amusing about the post, just arrogance. Unless of course you were being sarcastic. In that case, I would like to help prove my point with the below quote:
You're hoping that other moderators will be as undiscerning as yourself?
See how well sarcastic tones work over teh intarweb? (Feel free to submit spelling corrections!)
I pity you, since your ego is so fragile that you consider a correction an insult.
Personally, I want to know when I am wrong, so that I can get it right next time.
If I were instructing everyone but the person who got it wrong (actually, if you hunt around this thread just a bit, you will find multiple people making the same mistake) would not be informative. But instructing the person who made the mistake is, and I am addressing them directly in my comment.
Again, I don't think the comment should have been moderated at all, positive or negative.
The internet isn't the problem. Stupid people can't detect sarcasm when they read a book, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I pity you, since your ego is so fragile that you consider a correction an insult.
Personally, I want to know when I am wrong, so that I can get it right next time.
And I pity you, since you can't accept when you're wrong, even when several people tell you you are. I'm sure you know that you're actually wrong in this situation, but it seems that you can own up to it and say "ok, maybe it came off a bit insulting."
If you really just to wanted to correct them, you would simply say "8 Gb = 1 GB". When I'm in a peer review correcting someone's design, I don't say "rofl, we've verified to IEC-68-2-3 Ca BEFORE!~! Maybe you meant to say we need to verify to MIL-STD-810F?! Don't' worry, you're only ten years late!" I would usually say "Replace IEC-68-2-3 ca with MIL-STD-810F." Simple, eh?
But instructing the person who made the mistake is [informative], and I am addressing them directly in my comment.
I don't think the comment should have been moderated at all, positive or negative.
At least you partly agree with me that the comment had no worth whatsoever. Doesn't sound like you've completely convinced yourself one way or the other though.
Stupid people can't detect sarcasm when they read a book, either.
And it's good to know you'll be here to let people know when they've got it wrong! You should teach third grade, I hear children excel when they're ridiculed.
Might not be a very cost-efficient backup solution, but it should help out some small video studios out there. We already have one pr0n producer (CDGirls.com), who plans to burn-to-sell Blu-ray movies in the future. No DRM needed, either ;)
http://www.avn.com/articles/287130.html for full article
Another slashbot with a reading comprehension problem. Is this related to your deciding to simply not read the full comment, or a tiny vocabulary? If you had actually read the moderation FAQ you would have known that it instructs you to concentrate on positive moderation, but it also says that moderation should be reserved for comments which are particularly worthwhile. Thus this comment (by my criteria) is worthwhile but not particularly worthwhile and thus not deserving of moderation.
As for your jab about teaching third grade, I agree that I should not do that job. I would not have the patience. But with that said, even an intelligent third grader has a better grasp on the English language than yourself.
Finally, let me just address the top of your comment: "I'm sure you know that you're actually wrong in this situation, but it seems that you can own up to it and say "ok, maybe it came off a bit insulting." But see, again, this is an issue of reading comprehension. My comment can be "a bit insulting" to you if you infer that it is meant to be insulting. Even if I meant it to be a bit insulting, that is clearly not the primary thrust of my comment, or I would have called him an ignorant cockbagger or something. One of the things about me is that you seldom have to wonder what I'm thinking because I will let you know in no uncertain terms just what is going on in my head.
I'm sure you know that you are wrong, but you are unwilling to admit that the moderation was not justified, so you have to continue saying ignorant things that make it clear that the FAQ is only interesting to you when you think it says what you want it to say.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is a 12.5mm drive, which means it's too big for the MacBooks and the 15in MacBook Pro, as they require 9.5mm drives. So for now we're stuck with these awful unreliable Panasonic drives that Apple seems to love (presumably because they're so cheap) which cannot be patched for RPC1.
Man and Goat
Argh! Idiots.
Think Anti Piracy: Use one of the "non compatible" formats (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc) for computers, the other for movies, etc.
How I see it, HD-DVD should be for computers simply because the Xbox 360 has the HD-DVD drive, and Microsoft will likely let it be used for Vista or Vista+1.
This leaves Blu-Ray Disc to be sold as a solely Movie/Media based format that without computers should have little piracy issues (ahem, yes).
But no, no one ever thinks of an "intelligent" alternative to a format war do they?
signature is pants
I'm not sure to be honest - you could well be right, but it's probably worth noting that MS are part of the HDDVD alliance yet have publicly noted they'll likely release a Bluray solution for the 360 if that were to become the prominent format.
Companies behind the two alliances that aren't part of the manufacturing process seem a lot more willing to sway between formats as the market allows, I'd guess Apple is in the same boat - whilst they may be a Bluray backer, if it did flop I doubt they'd be afraid to jump ship and if they become both just as prominent I doubt they'd just ignore HDDVD.
I think it would be dangerous for Apple to make a software Blu Ray player. You know that would get hacked in a second, and the Blu Ray Consortium or whoever has no qualms about revoking keys. Can you imagine the hit to Apple's "coolness" when they keep getting their keys revoked and customers have to make sure to install the latest updates just so they can play their discs? Imagine every few months popping in a new disc and being presented with "please download the latest patches from Apple" screen right when you're at a friend's house who doesn't have wireless and you wanted to watch a movie together?
That is lame, not "Apple Cool."