Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Penryn iMac w/ Panasonic UJ-225 Blu-ray Inside?

N

nathanjbrown

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 9, 2008
265
57
Santa Barbara, CA
I've been searching the web, but I can't find an answer to this one...

Is there any reason to think that the Panasonic UJ-225 Blu-ray drive wouldn't fit inside the Penryn (April, 2008) Aluminum iMac? My optical drive died about two months after the warranty expiration and so I figured I'd just put in a Blu-ray drive (yes, I know I can't watch films). Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Nathan
 
If you can mash it in there, more power to ya. Just beware that everything's a tight fit in there already; there's no room for things to be any bigger than the stock components.
 
Actually, you can watch BluRay, just have to use Boot Camp or Virtualization with Parallels or VM Fusion....
 
I've been looking into this myself but I have not found any BD optical drives that would fit the bill.

Also, as others have noted you will have to actually boot up into Windows Vista or Windows 7 via Boot Camp, BD playback will not work properly at this time under virtualization (but they are making great strides so it is possible at some point this will work).

Personally I am going to wait until it works under virtualization and then simply use an external USB BD drive for playback and write of BD discs.

It really sucks though that I won't be able to author BD material in iMovie. Freaking Apple!
 
Hello Everyone,

I thought I'd post an update (and another question).

I successfully installed the Panasonic UJ-225 12.7mm Blu-ray drive in my Penryn iMac. They're easy to find on eBay and the price isn't totally ridiculous, so I decided to go for it before IDE optical drives no longer exist (the new iMac now uses SATA optical drives, I understand). The install was easy and it functions very well. Watching a movie in Snow Leopard is, of course, impossible. But playback via Boot Camp works well and ripping to AppleTV is a snap with MakeMKV and Handbrake.

While I was in there I also installed a 1TB Samsung F1 HDD. They get good reviews for their balance of speed, power efficiency, and noise.

QUESTION: I have only one problem with the Blu-ray drive. I can't push the disc in far enough for the drive to grab it. I push it all the way in through the slot in the iMac's aluminum casing, but then must use a pen cap or something to push it further in so that the drive grabs it. I swapped out the drive for Panasonic DVD drive and found the same thing to be true. Is there a way to adjust at what point the disc is grabbed by the optical drive?

Thanks.

Nathan
 
iMac (Penryn) bootable with UJ-225?

@ nathanjbrown

does your Penryn iMac boot with the UJ-225?

Did you ever try the "Mac Blu-ray Player"? As far as I heard, with this it should be possible to watch BD on a Mac now.

Thanks -
bulli
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back