Filed under: Humor, Multimedia, Odds and ends
Blu-ray Arrives for the Mac, Where's HD-DVD
As you probably know there's a format war going on right now to be the high-definition successor to DVD between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Like many computer makers, Apple has thrown their lot in with Blu-ray, primarily because of its higher disc capacity (at least in each format's initial form), but has yet to ship a Mac with a Blu-ray drive. Fortunately, MCE is now offering an internal EIDE Blu-ray recordable drive for the Mac Pro or Power Mac G5 that supports both single-layer 25GB and dual-layer 50GB discs (as well as a variety of DVD and CD formats).The future (well, unless HD-DVD wins) is yours today for only $699.00 and they even throw in a copy of Toast 8 Titanium so you can actually use the drive. Hopefully, a HD-DVD drive option will also be forthcoming, even if it's just for playing movies. It has been reported that the Mac can actually detect the XBox 360's USB external HD-DVD drive as a mere DVD drive, but no software yet exists to allow it to read HD-DVDs.
[Via Macworld]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jdobson said 9:50AM on 1-25-2007
I would like to know what is up at Apple with Blueray or HD-DVD authoring. Without the software what's the point with the hardware, and so far not even a peep out of apple. Sonic, the main competition for DVDSP already have their next gen DVD software on the market - what's up with Apple ?
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mrtotes said 11:34AM on 1-25-2007
Not a bad price considering Toast is included. Would it be just wrong to put on in an iMac G4 and then laugh for the next year whilst no other iMac owners can have Blu-Ray....
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HobbesDoo said 11:32AM on 1-25-2007
Any details on whether you can play BluRay movies on that drive? Or is it just for data? Still an awesome amount of data. :-)
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Brian said 2:06AM on 1-26-2007
After not getting any new software at the MacWorld Expo, it's pretty obvious that Apple is holding off on software releases for Leopard. I wouldn't expect BluRay support from Apple until Leopard comes out. I'm sure iLife 07 (iDVD) will support BluRay.
I won't be betting $700 on this drive hoping BluRay will win. I'll wait for either a clear winner or a combo drive that costs about $300. So, I'll be waiting atleast a year.
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Joseph Crawford said 12:52PM on 1-25-2007
Wow that is expensive ;) But i guess if you want the bleeding edge technology right away you must pay the price. I will wait for the prices to drop before i buy one.
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Robert said 12:52PM on 1-25-2007
Or, Blu-Ray bare drives are $600 at NewEgg.com, and you can buy Toast from Amazon and save a few bucks. I actually must congratulate MCE on *not* charging more! Have you seen LaCie's prices for a Blu-ray burner?
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Brandon said 1:24PM on 1-25-2007
Apple is not only supporting Blu-Ray. They also support HD DVD. In fact DVD Player plays HD DVDs and DVD Studio 4 can write to HD DVDs.
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pentumforever said 1:55PM on 1-25-2007
#6
Do you mean those HD DVDs on a DVD or real HD DVDs, if so how did you test it? Mircosofts HD DVD Drive?
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avixe said 2:02PM on 1-25-2007
#6,
doom9 claims DVD Player starts when you insert an HD-DVD disc into the XBox 360 drive, but that it can't play it. Where are you getting that info, that DVD Player plays HD-DVD? I haven't seen it.
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Alex Mills said 10:29AM on 1-27-2007
Sorry folks but Apple is fully suporting Blu-Ray, Device drivers and Major updates for our DVD Authoring software are in the works. A patch for Tiger will be avaliable soon and Leopard will fully support the new Blu Ray drives. Keep a look out for some new "Blue" devices shipping with our computers very soon.
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Thomas said 3:13PM on 1-27-2007
I hope bluray dies sooner rather than later.
For once I feel like Apple are on the wrong side of the fence.
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Henry said 2:54PM on 2-27-2007
I wonder if it will be possible to burn my 1080i movies made in iMovie HD on this Blu Ray burner? Or even on an external firewire or USB 2.0 blu ray burner?
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Jason said 10:36AM on 4-17-2007
DVD Studio Pro 4, which is Apples big DVD authoring program is for authoring DVDs and HD DVDs only! So what good is a blu-Ray Burner?
This is really funny, I don't think they have a Blu-Ray authoring suite of any kind. Here is the link for their New NON-Blu-Ray authoring program:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/dvdstudiopro/mastering.html
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