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Mac mini blu ray upgrade

N

neo179neo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
102
0
Nottingham, UK
Hello... i have just brought a new mac mini 2.4ghz and am only really going to be using it as my htpc... i upgraded the ram to 8GB as got it for like £60...

Ive got a drobo to hook up when my drivers come so i can build up my library... i do download alot of 1080p mkv's but they can take ages do to so... so what i want to do is (as i have a collection of blu rays as do friends and family) rip blu rays and add them to my library...

What will i need, hardware and software, to achieve this? I've seen a blu ray superdrive on the forums but no one that has seemed to implement and comment on it... all product links and advice would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks in advance...
 
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you can get a blue ray drive , possibly one that would eventually fit in the mini, and toast will burn blue rays , but so far there is no software option in osx to read them ,apple does not support blue rays so far mainly because of drm which creates a big security gap in reality , the only option is bootcamp and a version of windows , but then what was the point of getting a Mac in first place if you did want a htpc , as far as htpc goes there are better and faster options for less money inclusive blue ray drive , but now you got it try your best good luck
and makemkv does not always bring success
 
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Cave Man said:
You can stream the titles from Make MKV to VLC, but you lose True-HD, DTS-MA, subtitles and menus. Earlier Minis will likely struggle with playback, but it may work.
Click to expand...

Since he said he wants to rip blu-rays in order to play them, he doesn't lose subtitles. I haven't kept up with the HD audio thing, but doesn't the new mini with hdmi pass that to your receiver if you have a capable receiver an your using software that supports it (XBMC maybe)? Menus you will lose unless you use playback software in Windows.
 
astrorider said:
Since he said he wants to rip blu-rays in order to play them, he doesn't lose subtitles.
Click to expand...

I was replying to MacHampster68's comment, not neo179neo's OP.

I haven't kept up with the HD audio thing, but doesn't the new mini with hdmi pass that to your receiver if you have a capable receiver an your using software that supports it (XBMC maybe)? Menus you will lose unless you use playback software in Windows.
Click to expand...

The hardware is there, but at this time there is no Mac software that knows how to handle True-HD or DTS-MA audio. Thus, no way to do passthrough of the HDMI port (if it's even compliant with HD audio). The rumor is that the ffmpeg devs are working on this. If so, expect it supported in the usual apps (XBMC, Plex, etc) that use ffmpeg.
 
Cave Man said:
I was replying to MacHampster68's comment, not neo179neo's OP.

The hardware is there, but at this time there is no Mac software that knows how to handle True-HD or DTS-MA audio. Thus, no way to do passthrough of the HDMI port (if it's even compliant with HD audio). The rumor is that the ffmpeg devs are working on this. If so, expect it supported in the usual apps (XBMC, Plex, etc) that use ffmpeg.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks for the update!
 
the only real reason is DRM
which makes in reality any computer into a jukebox where you need to pay money in order to play /record or whatever you do with media , not direct , but apple would need to pay annually in order to offer a blue ray player in any Mac sold , and would need to alter OSX to make DRM support work , because DRM medi needs to be able to phone home the user data e.g name and email, apart fron the sniffing possibility what media you might have on your computer and if you legally obtained it
and i personally dont like the idea of a open source computer where everybody who wants to can look into, and apple doesn't like this idea neither , only microsoft without surprise jumped on that idea
 
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