I still haven't purchased the superdrive yet becoz I have been waiting for a similar device that can play Blu-ray... well, at least haven't heard any such news from apple. Is there any such portable USB device which allows me to play blur-ray on MBA? or at least burn some blu-ray disc.
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Any USB blu-ray device for MBA?
- Thread starter kaku945
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So SL has native Bluray support? This drive does not come with mac drivers or software.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
It can read the data on a Bluray disk and you can even write Blu ray disks with software. However, there is no software available for Macs right now that will actually play a Bluray film.
If you wanna use the drive as a player, you'll need to install Windows on your MBA and get software. Whether the MBA display will read as HDCP compliant, though, I have no idea. If not then you'll also need AnyDVD. Or you could go through the long process of ripping the blu-ray movie and playing (note that if you go that route you could never have to install Windows as you just convert on the Mac).
alphaod
macrumors Core
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Make MKV to rip Blu-ray movies to the hard disk.
Plex to play those movies back in glorious 1080p with 5.1 audio.
Toast to burn data to Blu-ray discs.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
Wow, Make MKV looks great, finally one program to do the whole schebang! Shame there's no OS X version though, that would be the icing on the cake. 🙁
Edit: No way, there *is* Mac version? So OS X can now effectively play Blu-ray films?? OMG!
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Yes, all Blu-ray video can be done under OS X. I just ripped the new Start Trek Blu-ray disc yesterday. Got the 3-disc set from BB for $24.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
How long do rips take on your Hackintosh? It'd probably take about the same time as on my Rev A Quad Mac Pro. I'm now adding a blu ray drive to my Christmas list. 😀
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
Wow that is much faster than I thought. I ripped one Blu-ray (Star Trek - The Motion Picture) via the PS3 method and the instructions you posted before and while I was chuffed that it worked, it took hours upon hours.
Scottsdale
Suspended
It's really sad Apple doesn't think enough of its customers to allow them OS X access to play Blu Ray movies via an external Blu Ray drive. Some damn software???
It's one thing to not include BluRay drives in Macs, it's something entirely different to not have an OS read a damn movie!
It all comes down to Apple wanting to sell everything digitally.
What about people who want an actual disk (product) for their money?
Does anyone else feel troubled by Apple lately? Sure they're making money... but at what cost to the long term goodwill towards its customers?
It's one thing to not include BluRay drives in Macs, it's something entirely different to not have an OS read a damn movie!
It all comes down to Apple wanting to sell everything digitally.
What about people who want an actual disk (product) for their money?
Does anyone else feel troubled by Apple lately? Sure they're making money... but at what cost to the long term goodwill towards its customers?
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
I didn't really care about the blu ray issue when Apple first said Bluray was a world of hurt. I just figured they'd get round to it at some point. It's kind of embarrasing now though. Why would I want to buy a movie via iTunes if the quality is so much lower than Bluray. We don't get any HD movies in the UK on iTunes and I think the HD stuff in the states is only 720p. I want 1080p+TrueHD audio.
I have a feeling that the biggest reason for Apple not supporting Bluray yet is that they haven't been able to afford to replace the 30" ACD with an LED version up until now. The 30" screen doesn't support HDCP and so can't be used to play Bluray on it. It would be a little embarrasing if Apple's top of the line display couldn't play Blurays whereas their iMacs could.
HDCP = biggest waste of time ever. It's a pain in the arse for legitimate purchasers of technology but at the same time it makes no difference to piraters. The DRM on Blurays took hackers what, two months to crack? A couple of months of non pirateness for the movie studios is obviously more important than 10 years worth of user confusion and hassle.
I have a feeling that the biggest reason for Apple not supporting Bluray yet is that they haven't been able to afford to replace the 30" ACD with an LED version up until now. The 30" screen doesn't support HDCP and so can't be used to play Bluray on it. It would be a little embarrasing if Apple's top of the line display couldn't play Blurays whereas their iMacs could.
HDCP = biggest waste of time ever. It's a pain in the arse for legitimate purchasers of technology but at the same time it makes no difference to piraters. The DRM on Blurays took hackers what, two months to crack? A couple of months of non pirateness for the movie studios is obviously more important than 10 years worth of user confusion and hassle.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Make MKV is nice because all it does is rewrap the video (AVC, MPEG-2 or VC-1) and audio (extracted AC3 or DTS 5.1 cores) into an MKV container. Plays right in Plex or XBMC and will passthrough the audio by optical port.
While I agree that online sales is a substantial part of Apple's reasoning, I also think they have a legitimate beef with the licensing terms of Blu-ray, which includes kernel-level code and the ability to modify that code by a Blu-ray disc.
Apple will have to enable audio over DisplayPort for that. Optical doesn't have the bandwidth.
The Studios are pretty much run by a bunch of morons.
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
Yeah DisplayPort can handle the audio, as can DVI. I don't mind if my Mac can't play TrueHD audio right now but I do mind if the product I'm buying doesn't support it. My Mac Mini could, in theory, support all the audio I'd want via the displayport anyway. Instead I use a PS3 for all my Bluray needs. Besides which, I'm not at a point where I feel comfortable dropping disks in favour of digital only video wise. Audio is fine but if I'm watching a film I sit down and make a thing of it - I don't do that when listening to an album.
I didn't realise Bluray needed kernel level code modifications, that sounds nasty!
The whole HDCP thing really is ridiculous - did they really think the main way for people to pirate their content was by somehow recording an HDMI data stream?? That's like recording a component cable video stream from a DVD, people haven't used methods like that since VHS and audio tapes went the way of the dodo.
Maybe it depends on the computer, but the Velocity Micro blu-ray external only requires USB power from my MBP 13". I'd like to trade up to a Macbook Air in the future, but I'd like to be able to use my blu-ray drive without an additional hub...
Anybody successfully used any external blu-ray drive powered from the USB hub alone?
I don't think they are the exact same, since the one you linked to is 2x BD-ROM read speed and the Velocity Micro is 4x.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
You'd be mistaken. It plays Blu-rays just fine, so long as you only have Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 audio.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Most who play Blu-rays on Windows use Power DVD. On Macs, Plex and XBMC are best, but VLC can handle them if you have a beefy-enough computer. Of course, you still need to decrypt/de-HDCP with Make MKV for disc playback, or just rip the disc for playback/transcoding.