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."

Comments

perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Multi-boot?

[iainl]

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.

Wow..

[Mockylock]

Incredible. NOW the overpriced Blu-Ray drive is available in BOTH of your massive-selling flavors! MAC and PS3!

Re:Wow..

[jimstapleton]

It's available for the PC too...

But nobody cares (can't say I blame them, I sure don't).

Dell already offers them...

[MSFanBoi2]

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

SuperDrive

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I would be more interested in a SuperDrive that supports both HDDVD and BR

per dollar

[cinnamon colbert]

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)

How long?

[hansamurai]

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.

Beaten?

[Mikey-San]

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.

& How Long Will the Disks Last

[BoRegardless]

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.

Re:& How Long Will the Disks Last

[LoudMusic]

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. Hard drives will ALWAYS be more reliable than any flat piece of plastic. But you can't throw a hard drive in an envelope and mail it for $0.41 in the US like you can a CD / DVD / HD|BR-DVD. Families enjoy this because they can send home movies around the nation very easily, and business find it useful for mailing out data that would otherwise take a long time to send over their already busy internet connection.

But for all my archival needs I use big ass external hard drives.

Not all assumptions are equal

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Meh

[jimstapleton]

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).

FUD

[Kjella]

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.

Re:FUD

[mrchaotica]

2) Hollywood has agreed to not use ICT before 2012 at earliest if at all

Right, they're waiting for more sheeple to buy into their shit before tightening the noose. And yet you're somehow trying to spin that as a good thing?!! FUD, indeed!

Pretty slow

[massysett]

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?

"Sweet?"

[Illbay]

...burning 45 GB is pretty sweet.

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).

Why Apple (probably) hasn't made this themselves

[Xest]

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*

NotFUD

[plasmacutter]

2) Hollywood has agreed to not use ICT before 2012 at earliest if at all

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.

So what

[strikeleader]

Shouldn't this be from the "Who gives a Rat's A** Dept".

Depends on Requirements

[bill_mcgonigle]

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

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 .DV archives on this system wouldn't be cost effective - I'd much rather store them on BluRay.

Gosh, maybe I don't have to chose between the two options!