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Blu-Ray Drive For Apple Notebooks

Posted by kdawson on from the but-not-from-Apple dept.

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."

3 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Dell already offers them... by MSFanBoi2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dell offers BluRay in their XPS and has done so for quite a while...

  2. How long? by hansamurai · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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  3. Re:Meh by jimstapleton · · Score: 5, Informative

    To put facts with your point:

    Cheapest Blu-Ray burner: $529 + 1 25GB DVD (requires a decently powerful video card???)
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16827106037

    Cheapest per-GB BD Disks: $32.99 (150GB total ~$0.22/GB)
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16817131063

    Blue ray in it's /best/ light financially...

    HDs in better light
    HDDs:
    750GB: $254.99 ($0.33/GB, 15 BD's worth of data)
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16822148134
    500GB: $129.99 (26/GB, 10 BD's worth of data)
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16822136073

    OK, ignoring the cost of the BD drive, which we'll assume you only need to buy once, per-GB the BD is cheaper. However, assuming you don't use unlimited BDs, then you you are cost effective with BDs, only if you have to have simultaneous backup of up to X GB:
    529 + .22x = .26x -> 529 = .04x -> 13,225 = x

    So, you must need at least 13TB of backup at any given time for BD to be more effective in terms of cost. (NOTE: if you do a rolling backup, you'll never reach this, and unless the BDs are -RW, they'll probably not be cost-effective)

    And I'm petty sure 10 optical disks are about the same size standard HD or larger. With a good/small enclosure, you'll still have less space than 15BDs, and you only need one enclusre, just swap the drives. Heck you can get a dongle type setup that doesn't even require the enclosure.

    So, HDs have space /and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).

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