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blu ray in 17" Macbook Pro Possible?

waywardsage

waywardsage

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 22, 2006
282
0
CA
After wainting for a year to buy a 17" blu ray equipt macbook pro, i took the dive and just bought on last April. Good thing I didnt' wait! Here we are over a year out and there still isn't blu ray on the mac!

So here's my crazy idea, I've heard about fastmacs external blu ray drives that they sell:

http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?cPath=10_2_52&products_id=415

Why couldn't I just purchase one of these drives, then swap out my existing internal superdrive for this baby? Is it wishfull thinking?

Also, I understand that I cannot watch Blu rays with Mac OSX. I'd have to install Windows XP and Power DVD.

And to stop the naysayers, yes there is a reason that I want Blu ray in my macbook pro. I've stopped buying DVD's pretty much all together and now buy blu ray. So i'd like a way to watch my movies i've bought and will continue to buy, on the go.

Any thoughts?
 
The drive may not fit and the connectors may not be the same. I thought the did make an internal for the MBPs, but it was insanely expensive.
 
waywardsage said:
After wainting for a year to buy a 17" blu ray equipt macbook pro, i took the dive and just bought on last April. Good thing I didnt' wait! Here we are over a year out and there still isn't blu ray on the mac!

So here's my crazy idea, I've heard about fastmacs external blu ray drives that they sell:

http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?cPath=10_2_52&products_id=415

Why couldn't I just purchase one of these drives, then swap out my existing internal superdrive for this baby? Is it wishfull thinking?

Also, I understand that I cannot watch Blu rays with Mac OSX. I'd have to install Windows XP and Power DVD.

And to stop the naysayers, yes there is a reason that I want Blu ray in my macbook pro. I've stopped buying DVD's pretty much all together and now buy blu ray. So i'd like a way to watch my movies i've bought and will continue to buy, on the go.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

If you have a non-unibody the fastmac internal blu ray will work. For unibody MBP they don't currently make a 9.5mm blu ray, which is the only size that will fit.

Checkout newegg as well if you only want a player.

I'm not 100% sure, but you might be able to use Plex to play the blu ray? If not, you'll just need windows with PDVD or something similar.
 
It's really sad that its come to this. Why isn't the community getting behind Blu Ray? If you have a Blu Ray player at home you can't NOT be blown away by its quality. It's insane.

Plus, i could watch all those movies on my macbook pro when i travel.

You know what cemented my acceptance of Blu ray and against downloads? I tried downloading an HD episode of Battlestart Galactica last week in 720P and guess how long it took? Over 10 hrs!!!

You'v got to be kidding me! People say downloads are taking over next week huh? Let me know who the next person is thats okay with waiting for a movie to take 10hrs to download.

People also argue that downloads are comming and they'll replace DVD/Blu ray. And i ask, why hasn't on demand HD cable movies replaced blu ray. It's mostly instantaneous, reasonably priced and even better quality than HD downloads on PS3 and iTunes. You know why it hasn't? Because people like OWNING a physical thing when they pay good money for it.

Sigh..I'm just so tired of arguing against the "download only crowd." Especially when its obvious they down have blu ray in their home.
 
Downloads are the future, whether you like it or not. Millions said that no one would buy from iTunes because they prefer having a physical disc or record. Is that still the case? Once the technology improves (players, internet speeds/bandwidth, graphics cards, the connected home) downloads of movies and movie rentals will be the norm, and it will remain as such because it's data-if it's improved upon, the players and standards don't really become obsolete.
 
I have a couple of BD players at home, but could care less about it in a computer. I dont use my optical drive now and would never watch a movie on such a small screen. Plus the screens have terrible contrast ratios, etc. Thats just my take, but an option would be ok.
 
waywardsage said:
It's really sad that its come to this. Why isn't the community getting behind Blu Ray? If you have a Blu Ray player at home you can't NOT be blown away by its quality. It's insane.

Plus, i could watch all those movies on my macbook pro when i travel.

You know what cemented my acceptance of Blu ray and against downloads? I tried downloading an HD episode of Battlestart Galactica last week in 720P and guess how long it took? Over 10 hrs!!!

You'v got to be kidding me! People say downloads are taking over next week huh? Let me know who the next person is thats okay with waiting for a movie to take 10hrs to download.

People also argue that downloads are comming and they'll replace DVD/Blu ray. And i ask, why hasn't on demand HD cable movies replaced blu ray. It's mostly instantaneous, reasonably priced and even better quality than HD downloads on PS3 and iTunes. You know why it hasn't? Because people like OWNING a physical thing when they pay good money for it.

Sigh..I'm just so tired of arguing against the "download only crowd." Especially when its obvious they down have blu ray in their home.
Click to expand...

Whoa... Nothing personal, but if it takes you 10 hours to dl a 4-8 gig file, then I think you might want to re-evaluate your ISP. No doubt you wouldn't be inclined to join the "download crowd" with that situation.

I personally don't really care if the movie comes on a disk or not. I want to watch the movie, not the medium. This coming from a guy that's got 3 BD-playing devices in his home (2 drives and 1 standalone player).

I'd rather take a little time to rip the M2TS and put it up on my server than deal with the stupid menus/previews/load times/dumb ass java crap, etc that comes with playing the disk in my Panny player.

My UMBP is the last place I'd consider putting a BD drive.

John
 
Kennedy said:
Downloads are the future, whether you like it or not. Millions said that no one would buy from iTunes because they prefer having a physical disc or record. Is that still the case? Once the technology improves (players, internet speeds/bandwidth, graphics cards, the connected home) downloads of movies and movie rentals will be the norm, and it will remain as such because it's data-if it's improved upon, the players and standards don't really become obsolete.
Click to expand...

I still prefer to have a case and disc so I can have a copy, ripping a CD to my PC/Mac is easy and I'll always have a back-up copy of it.
 
I only rent BD's. The prices are just too expensive to own and I generally only watch movies 1-2 times. I am tired of optical discs (so 90's), but still want the quality of BD so I put up with them!
 
johnnj said:
Whoa... Nothing personal, but if it takes you 10 hours to dl a 4-8 gig file, then I think you might want to re-evaluate your ISP. No doubt you wouldn't be inclined to join the "download crowd" with that situation.

I personally don't really care if the movie comes on a disk or not. I want to watch the movie, not the medium. This coming from a guy that's got 3 BD-playing devices in his home (2 drives and 1 standalone player).

I'd rather take a little time to rip the M2TS and put it up on my server than deal with the stupid menus/previews/load times/dumb ass java crap, etc that comes with playing the disk in my Panny player.

My UMBP is the last place I'd consider putting a BD drive.

John
Click to expand...

My service provider is Time Warner. And, they're pretty much the only game in town. So complaining, would be barking at the wind. Bandwith wise, when i measured it at the MSN bandwith tester, it came up with 980kbps. Which i know, sucks.

Point is, I don't live in the middle of nowhere. It's in southern CA. My point is, speeds will have to DRASTICALLY improve before things will go all download.

And again, On Demand programming has been around for years. And much of that can be had and comparible iTunes prices for rental, AND in HD. So why hasn't it taken over the world?

I mean, come on guys. We're techie nerds. We're on a mac forum in the middle of the night. Normal folks. The vast bulk of humanity can barely operate a personal computer, let alone worry about managing a list of files.

I mean, i'm not saying it'll never come. But when it does take over, it will be a step down in quality. No special features, hyper compression. I'm really not looking forward to those days.

Why all the Blu ray hate?
 
drew0020 said:
I have a couple of BD players at home, but could care less about it in a computer. I dont use my optical drive now and would never watch a movie on such a small screen. Plus the screens have terrible contrast ratios, etc. Thats just my take, but an option would be ok.
Click to expand...

My reasons are that I now collect Blu Rays over DVD's. So my library of current movies from here on out, wiil be blu ray. So whenever I go on a trip, or am somewhere thats not at home next to my big screen, i'd like to be able to watch my films.

And yes, I could rip them with handbreak. But that would mean that i'd either have to rip all my movies, (and last i checked, i don't have an infinite amount of storage). Or, an infinite amount of time. And i have a 2.6 dual core 17" macbook pro with 4GB of RAM. It's no slouch. But it still takes a whlle to rip a DVD. But again, i have only Blu Rays from here on out, so unless they offer a free digital copy. Which i'd love! It's blu ray or no watching on the go.
 
waywardsage said:
But it still takes a whlle to rip a DVD. But again, i have only Blu Rays from here on out, so unless they offer a free digital copy. Which i'd love! It's blu ray or no watching on the go.
Click to expand...

It takes a very long time to rip a Bluray disk and even on your MBP, it will take a days to encode.

And none of the Bluray burners will fit in your computer.
 
alphaod said:
It takes a very long time to rip a Bluray disk and even on your MBP, it will take a days to encode.

And none of the Bluray burners will fit in your computer.
Click to expand...

Just an FYI...it took me about 2 hours to rip the blu ray and 5hours to encode it to h.264.

It was about a 20gb file once burned, and <3 gb once encoded

2.66 core 2 duo
4gb Ram
17" UMBP
 
@OP

I too have Time Warner and while I've downloaded some "HD" movies from iTunes I was able to stream the movie pretty easy. I'm on the 15mb "Turbo" or whatever they call it. Half the time TWC sucks because at peak times I'm sharing bandwidth with everyone on the local node. That becomes the bigger issues of downloading or streaming. The good news for us stuck with TWC is the fact wireless providers over the next 18 months will be ramping up 4g/LTE solutions that will surpass current cable offerings. Anyhow...

To the Blue Ray issue, I use a PS3 to play mine to my DLP set but I would guess you will be able to find 9mm drives sometime in the near future as an aftermarket add on. I still think Apple won't look to make it a "stock" drive as they would rather rent you movies thru iTunes than offer us an option to rent a blue ray and watch it thru another vendor. Just a guess, but makes logical sense not to cannibalize your own movie rentals with the ease of use of a BD drive.

To your comment about Battlestar Galactica...have you checked it out on Hulu? it's free, streams 480p as a decent picture on my 17" and no it's not HD but it is great when your on the go :) Loved the last episode on Friday too, good show.
 
bossxii said:
@OP

I too have Time Warner and while I've downloaded some "HD" movies from iTunes I was able to stream the movie pretty easy. I'm on the 15mb "Turbo" or whatever they call it. Half the time TWC sucks because at peak times I'm sharing bandwidth with everyone on the local node. That becomes the bigger issues of downloading or streaming. The good news for us stuck with TWC is the fact wireless providers over the next 18 months will be ramping up 4g/LTE solutions that will surpass current cable offerings. Anyhow...

To the Blue Ray issue, I use a PS3 to play mine to my DLP set but I would guess you will be able to find 9mm drives sometime in the near future as an aftermarket add on. I still think Apple won't look to make it a "stock" drive as they would rather rent you movies thru iTunes than offer us an option to rent a blue ray and watch it thru another vendor. Just a guess, but makes logical sense not to cannibalize your own movie rentals with the ease of use of a BD drive.

To your comment about Battlestar Galactica...have you checked it out on Hulu? it's free, streams 480p as a decent picture on my 17" and no it's not HD but it is great when your on the go :) Loved the last episode on Friday too, good show.
Click to expand...

Good suggestions. Thanks. Yes i enjoy Hulu. I usually use it. But at the time, a few days after it'd aired. The 2nd to last ep. of BSG hadn't made its way to Hulu. Plus the wife wanted to see it on the big screen, (she's a fan too.) and wasn't too keen on watching it on my MBP. I'd downloaded it over the PS3 video store.

I suspect i got throddled back because of peak hrs. I live in an apt complex. Now, at 10:30PM i'm doing the test and getting insane numbers at the CNET bandwith tester: 4080000 kbps!! Thats what its saying now. Is that even possible?! It MUST be broken.
 
waywardsage said:
Good suggestions. Thanks. Yes i enjoy Hulu. I usually use it. But at the time, a few days after it'd aired. The 2nd to last ep. of BSG hadn't made its way to Hulu. Plus the wife wanted to see it on the big screen, (she's a fan too.) and wasn't too keen on watching it on my MBP. I'd downloaded it over the PS3 video store.

I suspect i got throddled back because of peak hrs. I live in an apt complex. Now, at 10:30PM i'm doing the test and getting insane numbers at the CNET bandwith tester: 4080000 kbps!! Thats what its saying now. Is that even possible?! It MUST be broken.
Click to expand...

I don't think that its true. thats 3.9 gigabits/sec.

Use speedtest.net
 
waywardsage said:
Good suggestions. Thanks. Yes i enjoy Hulu. I usually use it. But at the time, a few days after it'd aired. The 2nd to last ep. of BSG hadn't made its way to Hulu. Plus the wife wanted to see it on the big screen, (she's a fan too.) and wasn't too keen on watching it on my MBP. I'd downloaded it over the PS3 video store.

I suspect i got throddled back because of peak hrs. I live in an apt complex. Now, at 10:30PM i'm doing the test and getting insane numbers at the CNET bandwith tester: 4080000 kbps!! Thats what its saying now. Is that even possible?! It MUST be broken.
Click to expand...

Anything is possible with TWC, but if you have run this test more than once you may want to "clear" your browsers cache. It can give you false readings by loading the page from cache vs their test site. Some sites this is an issue, other's it's not. i've not used CNET though so hard to say. Then again with TWC anything is possible lol :)

Just an update, ran the CNET test 3 times, started at 1600 kbps, then 1900+, then over 3000... pretty sure it's a cache issue.
 
okay, i went to speakeasy.net and got this:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 17219 kbps (2152.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 972 kbps (121.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
 
waywardsage said:
okay, i went to speakeasy.net and got this:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 17219 kbps (2152.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 972 kbps (121.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Click to expand...

Then why would it take you 10 hours to download 720p? Hell, I can download a full dual layer BD (50GBs) in 5 hours.
 
bbadalucco said:
Just an FYI...it took me about 2 hours to rip the blu ray and 5hours to encode it to h.264.

It was about a 20gb file once burned, and <3 gb once encoded

2.66 core 2 duo
4gb Ram
17" UMBP
Click to expand...

When I do a rip, I only extract the main M2TS file, because all I'm really interested in is the movie. I also don't bother with re-muxing because the PCH units I have can deal with the multiple audio streams.

Copying this file, which can range from 12-30 gigs only takes on average about 35 minutes, ripping directly onto my server over the network. I do this all in PC-land, so maybe there's a difference, but my rip/transcoding machine is by no stretch a monster.

My storage isn't limitless (9tb on the server), but it's enough to keep the favorites archived and the more one-shots on hand than I can watch for the foreseeable future.

I'm not a hater of the data that comes on the BD or the technology that makes fitting that data possible. I've been in many arguments with my real life friends extolling the virtues of it (some were pulling for HD-DVD).

What I don't like is:

1. Sometimes a legitimate disk will report a "digital rights violation" and won't play
2. Some movies take several minutes to load
3. Some moves lock the previews so you can't skip the entire section, you have to skip through each one.
4. The overly tarted up menus. I just want to watch a movie, not be forced to observe some dude's java skills.

What I'm getting at is that I think the software part of BD sucks and I'm willing to take steps to circumvent them. It's not hard.

John
 
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