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BluRay Playback on Mac Pro

ildondeigiocchi

ildondeigiocchi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 30, 2007
695
0
Montreal
Ok guys so here's the issue. Yesterday, I installed a LG Super Multi Blue 8X Bluray player in my Mac Pro. Everything works fine. OSX and WinXP picked up the drive right away. I installed the Cyberlink Suite software that came with the drive which includes PowerDVD 7. I ran Cyberlink BD Advisor and got all green checks except for the video card driver for my 4870. I find this weird since i downloaded the Latest ATI drivers. Anyways I proceeded by trying to play a Bluray video on XP on PowerDVD7 but it wouldn't work because I had to pay to activate it. Anyway I decided to download the free trial of PowerDVD 9 and tried playing back multiple Bluray videos. They load up to around 30% and then the program quits. My display which is a 32" Samsung HDTV is HDCP so I dont know what the problem is? Any ideas?
 
Mac Pro is not HDCP compliant under Windows via BootCamp, it has been told many times, even if your BR player, graphic card and monitor are.
The very simple solution is to use a utility like AnyDVDHD to bypass this.
 
Proof ? Well, put your BR movie and look what happen, you'll see a beautiful black screen and a security warning popup about DRM protection.
Now plug same graphic card and monitor in a PC, it works.
I tested it myself on my PC and my Mac.
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
I'm connected from MiniDisplayport to DVI via the special adapter i bought from Apple and then a DVI to HDMI adapter which connects to the HDTV.
Click to expand...

Daisy chain alert.

Try it agin with your monitor connected with the MiniDisplayPort->DVI and use the DVI->HDMI on the DVI port.
 
Apply

I really don't know what is taking :apple: so long to support BluRay. The MacPro is a great machine for video editing. :apple: must think that there is no people out there getting paid to work on BluRay :confused:
 
TK2K said:
please elaborate?
p.s. sorry if it's just too early for me to catch your sarcasm
Click to expand...

Oh, not sarcasm at all.

Hang on, I may have the wording incorrect. It's either Blu-ray's crap can modify the OS, or the OS kernel itself has to BE modified for Blu-ray to run.

Either way, that's something that Apple's not keen on doing.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Oh, not sarcasm at all.

Hang on, I may have the wording incorrect. It's either Blu-ray's crap can modify the OS, or the OS kernel itself has to BE modified for Blu-ray to run.

Either way, that's something that Apple's not keen on doing.
Click to expand...

hmmm I know the blu ray 'live' profile requires OS integration and web integration, but as far as I knew it doesn't act any differently than a program that is running in the computer... i'm very interested
 
The Mac Pro hardware works very nicely with Blu-Ray with Bootcamp, Windows and particularly with AHCI drivers if you have a SATA BD drive, which is pretty much the only interface left for BD drives. I know there may be one or two old PATA drives knocking around on some shelves but they will not be there for long.

Apple have claimed in the past that the licensing model for the patent owners is too complicated and expensive. That has all changed some months ago and there is nothing left as an excuse not to do Blu-Ray. The fact is they simply don't care. Their main business is mobile devices which would need a 9mm slot load drive. That isn't available and so they procrustinate.

Desk top machines are such a tiny business now that they can afford to ignore the top graphic technologies in movies. But every customer who ownes a good 1080p screen is aware that they are doing a bad job there. I would not have Windows on my Mac Pro if I would not need it for Blu-Ray. So its a great annoyance to me.
 
I have another theory on this Blu-Ray thing.

Up until the MDP displays started getting forced down our throats, Apple's displays were NOT HDCP compliant.

This includes their Flagship 30" ACD. I think they have been trying to roll out enough HDCP compliant displays so their loyal customers won't get COMPLE TELY burned.

Imagine being the Apple Tech guy who has to explain to A new Nehalem & 30" ACD purchaser that to use his new Nehalem to author Blurays, he is going to need to shop for a nice new Dell HDMI display. (OR AN HDTV)

So out in the field are literally THOUSANDS of pricey, shiny Apple DIsplays, none of which can have a Blu-Ray viewed on them.
 
Apple could have avoided the issue if they were simply supporting VGA conversion on DVI ports like the rest of the world. Blu-Ray works fine with VGA.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Except HDCP doesn't work over VGA, so any commercial Blu-ray won't play.
Click to expand...

You can visit me any time and have a look on a perfectly playing Blu-Ray installation. So far it has played every commercial disk I have tried.

SATA GGW-H20L
X1900XT or HD3870
LE46A956 Samsung on VGA 1920x1080 @59,9 Hz
Cyberlink Software
XP Professional or Vista 64-Bit

When I run the BD Advisor all my components get certified. Of course the grafic cards are HDCP enabled. That does not mean you have to use HDMI. In fact via HDMI I get practically no 1:1 pixel mapping.
 
Well, your television (46", I assume?) is HDCP compliant - although VGA may not itself be compliant, it can (to the best of my knowledge) identify the monitor at the other end - upon reading it as compliant, it starts working. A theory.

Also, you sure your television is set up correctly? Not trying to offend, but it sounds like overscan/underscan problems.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I've tried removing the DVI to DVI attached to the mindisplay port to DVI and still no luck. Loads to 27% and then just quits. DVD's work fine. For some reason I feel as though it's a software issue because all my components more than meet the requirements for Bluray playback. However, Cyberlink advisor keeps telliing me my graphics card driver for my 4870 will not allow bluray playback as a red dot appears next to it.
 
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