When will we see Blu Ray drives in MBPs?

[Yixian]

Now the diodes etc. are much cheaper, I would say the blu ray drive is economically viable for the next MBP updates, but I have no idea about power consumption or industrial design.

Apple has been on the blu ray bandwagon for a long time, the platform has been around for years now, it's won the format war, and frankly DVDs look awful on Macs these days, all of them coming with extremely high res screens. Every single Apple computer is crying out for HD.

But is Apple gonna maintain it's astronomical mark up on MBPs and deny us a blu ray drive for a few more years? And make it some hugely expensive upgrade?

Whatever happened to year of the HD? The only HD content Apple supplies (bar podcasts) isn't even available on their computers, let alone outside of the United States!

 

[alphaod]

There are bajillion threads on this; please search.

... and no idea. Whenever it makes the most economic sense.

 

[Tallest Skil]

Not before the Mac Pros.

Having said that, I'm thinking BluperDrives in the Mac Pros at WWDC and BluperDrives in the MacBook Pros in the Montevina update on July 14. If either of these does not happen, then you won't see BluperDrives in Macs. Period. Steve believes that optical media is dead. He won't invest in it.

 

[Yixian]

Are we thinking BD drives in only the top end MBPs or across the board?

Personally, seeing as it's Apple, I'm expecting an upgrade, available only on the top MBP, for twice what would be considered reasonable.

Oh well..

 

[Dreamail]

Why not all in one go?

Not before the Mac Pros.

True, but why not update all components involved at the same time?

In order to view BluRay DVDs on an external monitor it needs HDMI or DisplayPort as DVI doesn't support encrypted signals.
Currently no Apple monitor has DisplayPort.
Mac Pros could easily be upgraded with a new (optional) graphics card with DisplayPort and (optional) internal BluRay drive.
Not so much MacBooks and MacBookPros. Unless their motherboard supports HDMI or DisplayPort you can't easily add it.

And I think that was the missing puzzle piece all along. The GM45/PM45 chips from the Montevina platform for the first time support DisplayPort and hence the next MacBook iteration could go BluRay as the first Apple notebook. Even if only as a built-to-order option.

I think it's quite likely that the moment Montevina MacBook or MacBook Pros are introduced with a BluRay option, Apple will also introduce such an option for the Mac Pro (optional graphics card with DisplayPort and optional BluRay drive) as well as introduce matching new Apple monitors with DisplayPort.

Makes sense to go BluRay and DisplayPort all in one go.