Can anyone recommend an internal Blu-ray burner?

jsgtpd said:

Our company authors a lot of DVD's and we would like to start outputting our masters to Blu-ray. Can anyone recommend an internal Blu-ray burner? I'm new to Mac so not sure if its like Windows were any of them will install and work lol

I was looking at these but cannot tell if they are Mac friendly
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=3636

My system is
Mac Pro
Processor 2 x 2.4 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 24 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)

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Any standard internal should work fine - just verify the internal connectors if you have PATA or SATA.

Any SATA optical drive will work just fine. Including Blu-ray. I haven't researched which ones or better than the others so maybe someone else could recommend a good burner.

jsgtpd said:

Thanks so much for the replies. Do I have to open my tower to figure if its SATA or PATA? Or would I know that cause one would have cost me more than the other when I bought this machine lol

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It should tell you in System Information I would think, but you could open the case and if it is a wide ribbon cable it is PATA and the narrow/smaller connector is SATA. I am in Windows right now so I can't look but IIRC you can look under Disc Burning and it should reference PATA or SATA.

Hello,

I only buy Pioneer DVD and/or Blu-Ray drives. Always great, flawless and silent.

Loa

I have one of the LG kits for Mac Pro from this site:
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/internal+blu+ray

Got it over two years ago now, and it's still great. They have good options.

jsgtpd said:

Do I have to open my tower to figure if its SATA or PATA? l

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Apple switched to SATA optical drives for 2009 and later MPs. Judging from what you got is a 12-core (2x2.4Ghz) MP, it should have a SATA drive. You should find your DVD drive under the section of SATA in your system information.

Let's face it there are times when we need an optical drive... I love Mac's, but hate that the direction going forward is to skip the internal drive. Like many, I feel Apple is forcing us to consume media via iTunes... which works well, but sometimes you still need the stinkin' optical drive to do work!!!

JoeRito said:

Let's face it there are times when we need an optical drive... I love Mac's, but hate that the direction going forward is to skip the internal drive. Like many, I feel Apple is forcing us to consume media via iTunes... which works well, but sometimes you still need the stinkin' optical drive to do work!!!

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They are great for freeing up your hard drives. After i shoot a job, i am pretty much done with the camera raw - couple of blu ray 25 gigs takes care of it

JoeRito said:

Let's face it there are times when we need an optical drive... I love Mac's, but hate that the direction going forward is to skip the internal drive. Like many, I feel Apple is forcing us to consume media via iTunes... which works well, but sometimes you still need the stinkin' optical drive to do work!!!

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Just get an external, if you don't have a Mac Pro. I use an Lg BR writer and it rips and writes perfectly fine.

I've had both Sony an LG..I prefer the Sony not that there is anything wrong with my current LG.

STOP - The people replying here saying ANY drive with a SATA or IDE interface will be fine are wrong. Some drives do not support sleep in OS X, research the issue and you'll see it is a known problem. If a drive has sleep issues it does not 'wake' with the machine making the whole power saving option 'Put drives to sleep when possible' non-functional. A drive with this issue will not appear is OS X if the system sleeps the drives after non-usage, it crashes disk utility and system information if you try these after sleep.

Now this thread has already had advice of ANY drive working fine - that's wrong. Someone mentioned Pioneer drives are fine, they are mostly but some have sleep issues in OS X.

Now a lot of drives are plug and play but a little research to avoid those with sleep/wake issues is just good advice, speaking of which the LITE-ON iHES112 does not support sleep on OS X.

Find a drive you like read/write speed etc and then just type the model number and the words 'sleep' 'os x' in google and you'll soon see if it has any issues.

I have an LG WH12LS30. Reads, writes, rips, and the computer sleeps/wakes just fine.

JoeRito said:

Let's face it there are times when we need an optical drive... I love Mac's, but hate that the direction going forward is to skip the internal drive. Like many, I feel Apple is forcing us to consume media via iTunes... which works well, but sometimes you still need the stinkin' optical drive to do work!!!

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Replace "optical drive" by "floppy disk drive" and realize just how wrong you might be...

Loa

Loa said:

Replace "optical drive" by "floppy disk drive" and realize just how wrong you might be...

Loa

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Haha, I see what you did there. One media replacing another in the case of the humble floppy diskette but what for the optical disk? USB thumb drives?

All Taken said:

but what for the optical disk? USB thumb drives?

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Yes, but mainly: think of all the various ways that the net allows us to store and share files. (Broadband will not always be like it is now.)

People still "needed" the floppy disk drives when the iMac came without one... until, that is, they realized that they didn't.

Are optical disks completely useless now? Nope. There are still valid uses for them, but like the floppy drive in 1998, they're on a ticking clock.

Loa

Loa said:

Yes, but mainly: think of all the various ways that the net allows us to store and share files. (Broadband will not always be like it is now.)

People still "needed" the floppy disk drives when the iMac came without one... until, that is, they realized that they didn't.

Are optical disks completely useless now? Nope. There are still valid uses for them, but like the floppy drive in 1998, they're on a ticking clock.

Loa

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Cars never had floppy disk drives in them. Can think of a car without a CD player. Many don't have USB ports.

monkeybagel said:

Cars never had floppy disk drives in them. Can think of a car without a CD player. Many don't have USB ports.

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??? Not sure how relevant that analogy is, but I'll bite.

My car doesn't have a CD player, and even if it did, it would remain unused, and I would still need to plug my iPod into it. Who really wants to carry around dozens or hundreds of CDs nowadays???

Loa

monkeybagel said:

Cars never had floppy disk drives in them. Can think of a car without a CD player. Many don't have USB ports.

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Cars use CD's for music. Floppy disks were not used for music.

jsgtpd said:

FIrst off Thank you to everyone for your feedback I really appreciate it.

Decided on an LG, installed it..... but the frikkin tray is too high to slide out of the magical Mac Pro garage door drop down thingy FML!!

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Did you remove the tray front? Visit Macsales.com. hey have a video...

Loa said:

??? Not sure how relevant that analogy is, but I'll bite.

My car doesn't have a CD player, and even if it did, it would remain unused, and I would still need to plug my iPod into it. Who really wants to carry around dozens or hundreds of CDs nowadays???

Loa

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I don't know who would want to? Who really listens to 2k songs on their iPod? Most probably listen to a handful of albums, which a CD changer works great for.

I'm just pointing out that the optical disc still has many uses today unlike the floppy disk many years ago. Floppy disks prone to failure and were unreliable. I still have CD-R discs that work that I created in 1994 on Windows 3.1, and they work fine, are completely readable, and are not susceptible to static electricity and other failures. And these discs from 1994 (Verbatim) were not handled even with the best of care.

A "CD wallet" of Blu-ray/DVD/CD-R discs neatly labeled is much easier to organize and makes much more sense than a drawer full of USB flash drives that cannot be labeled in an organized manner and that could fail and any time without warning IMO. Both technologies have their advantages, but for people to dismiss the optical disc for other technologies are not utilizing them to their full potential.

I am not trying to be argumentative or abrasive - I just think many people overlook the usefulness of some technology and Apple clearly benefits from this by 1)selling more external Superdrives at a premium and 2)funneling people into the iTunes store. This is not a win for the consumer.

Off soapbox now