Blu Ray drive in a Mac Pro

[haravikk]

Hi there,

Now, I know Apple are reluctant to provide Blu Ray drives for their machines at the moment, but I'm wondering if it's possible to install any into a Mac Pro yourself? I'm hoping to start collecting Blu Ray copies of shows and movies that I like, but I need something to play them on, and would rather that were my computer.

My Mac Pro has a spare optical bay, and an unused SATA connector (one of the two behind its main fan), I've seen a couple out there that claim Mac support, but I'm hoping for recommendations/comments from people that actually own one. Are there any that are recommended? Any problems encountered?

Thanks!

 

[MacDawg]

Your Mac and OS X will not currently support it
You will have to work around it with Windows on the Mac

There are a multitude of threads detailing this
You can probably find them with MRoogle

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[haravikk]

There are some that boast Mac support such this one from FastMac, but it's pretty expensive.

I've also seen others that are intended for PC and Mac, so while OS X doesn't natively support Blu Ray, someone must be producing drivers and a media player for these devices.

 

[Darth.Titan]

Of course you can install a Blu-Ray drive in your Mac Pro. It can be used to read data BR Discs (and write them if you have a program like Toast)

But as MacDawg said you cannot play BR video titles without booting into Windows using Bootcamp or a virtual machine.

someone must be producing drivers and a media player for these devices.

No. Not for OS X. The DRM required for Blu-Ray must be built into the OS, so a third party solution is not possible. You'll have to wait for Apple to add support for Blu-Ray video discs.

 

[cseeman]

Talk about FUD!
Final Cut Pro 7 and Compressor 3.5 can create Blu-ray video discs complete with menu, chapters etc. Blu-ray drives can be used to burn both video and data discs. The only limitation is that the OS is not designed to handle playback of Blu-ray video discs.

Just make sure the drive can fit in the case and has the correct cables. Many major Mac dealers like OWC sell internal Blu-ray drives for the Mac.

Internal Blu-ray for Mac

 

[Tallest Skil]

The only limitation is that the OS is not designed to handle playback of Blu-ray video discs.

Hollywood Blu-ray disks. You can play what you author in Final Cut Studio.

 

[Aldaris]

Also, note that native OS X 10.5.2 has had Blu-Ray burning from the OS. The only real limitation here is playback at the moment, but I think it's safe to say apple will adopt it in the semi-near future.

But in the meantime, who doesn't have to back up a 25-50GB iTunes Librbary every now and again right?

 

[gugucom]

I have a BD with Vista 64 for Blu-Ray playback and I allways had Bootcamp. The BD playback software came with my drive. So all I had to do was fitting the drive and make sure Windows started into AHCI mode, which was a lengthy thing.

 

[haravikk]

How well does it work in a Virtual Machine such as VMWare Fusion or Parallels? I use all four of my internal bays as a single software RAID so I can't boot into Windows. I have a dedicated Windows drive attached to SATA-5 (one of the spare ports behind the main fan) but the Windows doesn't seem to be bootable on that port.

Regarding choice of drives, is there any reason to expect particular drives won't work with OS X for data-reading/burning, and for playback (in future), or should any Blu Ray drive work just as well as another in terms of compatibility, as with hard-drives?