Swap Superdrive for BluRay drive?

[Cr0nus]

As the title suggests, I am wondering if it is possible to swap the superdrive in a 2011 MBP for a BluRay drive from another manufacturer (assuming there is such an optical drive)?

Thank you!

 

[Pballer110]

Osx does not support bluray therefore it will not work.

 

[un.titled]

Osx does not support bluray therefore it will not work.

I don't know much about this, but my external XBOX360 HDDVD player works for playing movies on my iMac.

Is not playing blu-ray a hardware or software issue?

 

[AppleScruff1]

I don't know much about this, but my external XBOX360 HDDVD player works for playing movies on my iMac.

Is not playing blu-ray a hardware or software issue?

It's a Steve issue.

 

[cinger0439]

Does Steve have a problem with blu-ray?

 

[altecXP]

The problem is that a MacBook uses a 9.5MM drive. a Blueray is a 12mm drive.

 

[dagamer34]

Does Steve have a problem with blu-ray?

It's a bag of hurt.

Honestly, the only way I'd bother playing Blu-ray movies on a Mac is to have them ripped onto an external drive and just playing the largest .m2ts file that exists in the BDMV folder. There really aren't any other solutions besides booting into Boot Camp.

At $200, buying a drive for your MacBook Pro is a rather expensive proposition, especially considering there isn't any native playback software for Mac OS X.

 

[Evan_11]

It's a Steve issue.

Yep. No doubt he even has it in his will. Stupid since Apple is actually on the Blu-ray board as well as Pixar movies being a driving force behind the format's current survival. If you have small children you know the benefits of blu-ray discs in that they don't scratch nearly as easily as DVDs. That and the picture quality from blu-ray movies makes it easier for me to sit and watch Wall-E fifty times over.

 

[cinger0439]

I see, so it's a hardware problem. That is the only thing I miss from my PC - the ability to watch blu-rays.......

 

[old-wiz]

Among other things, Apple doesn't want to put the messy Blu-Ray decode into ring 0 of the OSx kernel. A bug down there will bring down the entire machine hard. Worse yet, the blu-ray decode gets modified via updates from the providers, which is a nasty thing to deal with.

 

[Cory Bauer]

Does Steve have a problem with blu-ray?

Steve won't allow blu-ray in Macs because:

1. Apple's in the business of selling and renting a relatively small selection of overpriced, mediocre-quality "HD" digital downloads. And as far as Steve's concerned if a movie, tv show or album isn't available on the iTunes store then it doesn't exist at all. Recall how they acted like no one had been able to hear the Beatles in 40 years until they came to iTunes last year. If it weren't for the iTunes Store, you can guarantee blu-ray would have been available in Macs three years ago when every other PC manufacturer was offering it up.

2. Steve wants the optical drive to die because he's obsessed with making everything thinner and lighter. He wants all of the MacBook Pro's to be like the MacBook Air, and they've been working very very hard to negate the need for discs. They've got iTunes to eliminate the need for CDs. They now have the Mac App Store to eliminate the need to install software by disc. Now if they can just keep pretending Blu-Ray doesn't exist, and prevent professionals from expanding the format by excluding authoring tools from Final Cut Studio and the Mac Pro, then they can kill the optical drive sooner rather than later.

The only problem with Steve's plan is that blu-ray is adopting very well without them. Steve likes to pretend its like one of those successor-to-the-CD formats that never took off, but you can find blu-ray virtually everywhere movies are rented or sold. But there's no question that they're using their dominance with Final Cut Studio in the film/video market, and their position as the number one digital download distributor, as a means to try and stagnate blu-ray adoption in favor of their iTunes Store.