Mac Pro Blu Ray Drivers needed!

[Nuts4Mac]

Recently purchased a Samsung DVDWBD SH-B083L Blu Ray Optical Drive for my Mac Pro, second bay. I have the 2.26 Nahalem Mac, 8-Core.

This drive is unresponsive with Blu Ray discs. It plays regular DVD fine, but nothing with Blu Ray. I believe I need the proper drivers but not sure. Does the drive need formatted? How do you do this? Is there something I am missing? Any Help?
After searching the web, I can't seem to find Mac drivers for this drive. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, maybe they are not there. Any help?

 

[Hellhammer]

As far as I know, you cannot watch Blu-Rays under OS X, you have to boot into Windows or rip it with MakeMKV and then play it

 

[Roman23]

Blu-ray in OS X

Hi, there might be one solution. I have heard that VLC player does support playing Blu-ray movies.. at least this is what I heard. Try it and let us know.

Recently purchased a Samsung DVDWBD SH-B083L Blu Ray Optical Drive for my Mac Pro, second bay. I have the 2.26 Nahalem Mac, 8-Core.

This drive is unresponsive with Blu Ray discs. It plays regular DVD fine, but nothing with Blu Ray. I believe I need the proper drivers but not sure. Does the drive need formatted? How do you do this? Is there something I am missing? Any Help?
After searching the web, I can't seem to find Mac drivers for this drive. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, maybe they are not there. Any help?

 

[nanofrog]

Hi, there might be one solution. I have heard that VLC player does support playing Blu-ray movies.. at least this is what I heard. Try it and let us know.

I'm under the impression that VLC under OS X wouldn't be able to (OS X doesn't have the necessary support for BR = licensing). So movies are "ripped" under other applications, such as MakeMKV under Windows. Once done, it can then be played by VLC under OS X.

If this is incorrect, I hope other MR members will clarify, as it could be of benefit to other MR members (i.e. HTPC use).

 

[Hellhammer]

I'm under the impression that VLC under OS X wouldn't be able to (OS X doesn't have the necessary support for BR = licensing). So movies are "ripped" under other applications, such as MakeMKV under Windows. Once done, it can then be played by VLC under OS X.

If this is incorrect, I hope other MR members will clarify, as it could be of benefit to other MR members (i.e. HTPC use).

MakeMKV is available for OS X too and it can rip Blu-Rays just fine (there is lengthy thread about it) but you still cannot play Blu-Rays under OS X, you have to rip it first, then it plays fine

There is workaround to get BR playback though but it isn't simple
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/841318/

 

[nanofrog]

MakeMKV is available for OS X too and it can rip Blu-Rays just fine (there is lengthy thread about it) but you still cannot play Blu-Rays under OS X, you have to rip it first, then it plays fine

Good to know MakeMKV will rip a BRD under OS X, as I only recall users doing it under other OS's.

But in terms of playback, OS X doesn't have the necessary code for direct playback of a BRD (since Apple's not licensed it). Once ripped however, it can be viewed under OS X.

 

[Icaras]

MakeMKV is available for OS X too and it can rip Blu-Rays just fine (there is lengthy thread about it) but you still cannot play Blu-Rays under OS X, you have to rip it first, then it plays fine

There is workaround to get BR playback though but it isn't simple
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/841318/

Yea, I was about to mention this....Caveman would be a great person to ask on these forums about blu-ray in Macs.

 

[Hellhammer]

Yea, I was about to mention this....Caveman would be a great person to ask on these forums about blu-ray in Macs.

Not great, the best He really knows his stuff about Blu-Ray in Macs so dropping him a PM will not leave you cold

 

[Gomff]

How do you get round the way optical drives' opening and shutting mechanisms work with a Mac Pro? I'm talking specifically about the end of the tray on the drive getting in the way of the integrated door on the Mac Pro chassis. Do you have to go for specific models?

I've always wondered about this

 

[TheStrudel]

You have to take the bezel off. All tray loading drives have a bezel that can be removed. Once you do so, it'll work in the Mac Pro bays.

As regards to drivers, OS X does support data reading of blu-rays, but you'll need to use the aforementioned methods to rip or make it available for playback. Once you've done that you can watch or convert it.

 

[Gomff]

OK thanks for letting me know. Does it have to be an IDE optical drive? I'm considering getting a Blu Ray burner for my early 2008 Mac Pro.

I was also considering going for an external drive so that it can be used on more than one machine but obviously these are more expensive. I'd probably settle for an internal as I'd use it mainly on the big machine anyway.

 

[Hellhammer]

OK thanks for letting me know. Does it have to be an IDE optical drive? I'm considering getting a Blu Ray burner for my early 2008 Mac Pro.

I was also considering going for an external drive so that it can be used on more than one machine but obviously these are more expensive. I'd probably settle for an internal as I'd use it mainly on the big machine anyway.

There are no IDE Blu-Ray drives as far as I know. If you want to make it external, just get a simple 5.25" enclosure

 

[Gomff]

So how would it work on a 2008 MP? AFAIK the interface is IDE isn't it?

Sorry for the noob questions....No idea about this stuff

 

[Hellhammer]

So how would it work on a 2008 MP? AFAIK the interface is IDE isn't it?

Sorry for the noob questions....No idea about this stuff

You can use IDE to SATA adapter

 

[nanofrog]

So how would it work on a 2008 MP? AFAIK the interface is IDE isn't it?

Sorry for the noob questions....No idea about this stuff

The existing DVD burner is IDE, but there's also an extra pair of SATA ports (labeled as ODD_SATA).

There is a bit of a restriction though, as they'll work fine for OS X, but won't boot other OS's, such as Windows or Linux (won't run installation media for them either). So if you do run Windows or Linux, the disk and installation media need to go through the IDE port or externals (USB for optical, SATA is fine for HDD's or SSD's; FW won't work for recent versions of Windows).

Another solution (makes things easy), is to get an IDE to SATA adapter, and attach that between a SATA BR Drive and the IDE port (example + power cable kit).

 

[Gomff]

Hmm, it's sounding like an external drive is the way to go perhaps? Seems pointless to install on the SATA port since only OSX could see it and OSX doesn't play back BR.

Would USB2 be fast enough? Are there any issues surrounding HDCP and external drives or IDE to SATA converters?

 

[300D]

This drive is unresponsive with Blu Ray discs.

As it will always be.

 

[TheStrudel]

Unresponsive with commercial Blu-ray video discs, you mean. It reads and writes BD-R data just fine for me. And if you burned a video BD, you could use Plex, Quicktime, or VLC to play back the video files with no trouble at all.

Now that BD-Rs have dropped to prices around $1/disc (!) if you know where to look, Blu-ray is actually a very reasonable proposition just for data storage. And when you can cram ~2600 10 megapixel RAW images on a single disc, it's quite handy.

It is for me, at any rate.

 

[Cave Man]

This drive is unresponsive with Blu Ray discs. It plays regular DVD fine, but nothing with Blu Ray. I believe I need the proper drivers but not sure.

You don't need drivers to watch Blu-ray discs under OS X, you need Make MKV and VLC. Once you mount the disc and it shows up on the desktop, you launch Make MKV and open the disc with it. You then have Make MKV decrypt the disc and stream it from its built-in server, and then open the stream with VLC. See my sig for the details.

 

[SmilesLots]

There are no IDE Blu-Ray drives as far as I know. If you want to make it external, just get a simple 5.25" enclosure

Yes there are IDE blu-ray drives. I have one in my Mac Pro - a Sony BWU-100 iirc. Not at that computer at the moment. One of the first blu-rau burners that came out. Cost me $800 at the time, and I've never been able to use it yet. Soon though.

 

[Hellhammer]

Yes there are IDE blu-ray drives. I have one in my Mac Pro - a Sony BWU-100 iirc. Not at that computer at the moment. One of the first blu-rau burners that came out. Cost me $800 at the time, and I've never been able to use it yet. Soon though.

LOL, 800$ I haven't seen any lately, e.g. NewEgg has zero. Maybe there are older with IDE too but IDE to SATA adapter does the same job

 

[SmilesLots]

LOL, 800$ I haven't seen any lately, e.g. NewEgg has zero. Maybe there are older with IDE too but IDE to SATA adapter does the same job

Yeah I kinda got taken on that one. Was at Best Buy here back in 2007 I think. I should have waited. I got the Mac Pro, the blu-ray drive, an HD video camera, a blu-ray player all in the span of about 3 months, with the idea I was going to make blu-ray movies of trains and sell them Never happened, what with Apple's zero support on blu-ray at the time.