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Blu-Ray on Imac
- Thread starter Sdancott
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1. plug in an external USB Blu-Ray drive to the Mac
2. load VMWare with Vista or Win7
3. bridge USB ports from iMac to VMWare.
4. Watch BD discs.
I seriously hope Apple pulls their heads out and offers Blu-Ray in the next hardware refresh. They are starting to look foolish touting market leadership in the audio video and editing space and not supporting the best AV format ever developed.
Agree. When Steve Jobs said that Blu-Ray was a bag of hurt, he was just making excuses.
My understanding is that 1080p Blu-ray was only available under Boot Camp, not virtualization. Has something changed?
Maybe, maybe not, I'm only indicating how it would theoretically be possible under virtualization.
I'm kind of iffy about whether that would work acceptably. DVD and Blu Ray playback use your GPU heavily, and that can't get used through virtulization. You'd be totally reliant on your CPU, and it would by kind of tied up too.
I don't know, might work with a fast enough CPU, and maybe some VM products would work better than others, but it's probably at least a bit iffy.
I don't know, might work with a fast enough CPU, and maybe some VM products would work better than others, but it's probably at least a bit iffy.
In the configuration of the VM in VMWare you can enable USB sharing. I do the same to connect to my Nokia XpressMusic. Don't know if Parallels offers the same options.
And about the iMac BD player. I rather don't see one built-in or only as an optional part. Don't wanna pay a dime more for it either. I download my movies in HD quality and play them back with VLC and I have a BD player in my PS3 I never use.
For the Mac Pro a BD player can be a nice optional part.
Blu Ray is a bag of hurt!
Im constantly battling with powerdvd 8 & 9 and with windows vista & 7 and bootcamp drivers just to keep powerdvd working.
Sometime reverting the os to xp LOL to watch a movie.
When it works its great! When it dosnt its a bag of hurt ! Big time !
Not for the faint hearted.
Ps Apple also has to integrate blue ray support into every app and the core os, dvd player and every mac!
It will take time but they will bring the support all at one I recon! Cant waite
Im constantly battling with powerdvd 8 & 9 and with windows vista & 7 and bootcamp drivers just to keep powerdvd working.
Sometime reverting the os to xp LOL to watch a movie.
When it works its great! When it dosnt its a bag of hurt ! Big time !
Not for the faint hearted.
Ps Apple also has to integrate blue ray support into every app and the core os, dvd player and every mac!
It will take time but they will bring the support all at one I recon! Cant waite
I believe that there was a screen shot of the beta itunes for Snow Leopard that showed the words "blu-ray" under the copyright section (warning you not to abuse copyrights).
So... there is hope. We've only been expecting Blu-Ray support on OS X now for over 2 years.
The "bag of hurt" comment from Steve was due to licensing complications with the technology. He and others can't use that as an excuse any longer, however, as all of the licensing is now bundled into a single entity and handled by a 3rd party company.
So... there is hope. We've only been expecting Blu-Ray support on OS X now for over 2 years.
The "bag of hurt" comment from Steve was due to licensing complications with the technology. He and others can't use that as an excuse any longer, however, as all of the licensing is now bundled into a single entity and handled by a 3rd party company.
That is the real $64,000 question. There are no apps to support Blu-Ray playback like PowerDVD on the PC. I'm sure there will be many once official Blu-Ray support is announced on the Mac platform. It will be soon; I am confident about that. I just wish it were sooner rather than later!
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Blu-ray playback software (PowerDVD and Nero) will not play Blu-ray discs under virutalization.
Not under Mac OS X. It's all with the cpu.
A Mini is capable of Blu-ray playback provided the HDCP and encryption have been removed.
Looks like a generic copyright message from Gracenote. I wouldn't read into it too far at this point.
It's more than that. Blu-ray requires OS-level parsing of the drive every few seconds for the disc decryption key. I think Steve doesn't want stuff in his OS that he has no control over. (DVDs only do the decryption check once; at disc mounting.)
Not Blu-ray discs, but you can play Blu-ray rips on Macs with Plex and XBMC.
I forgot about the issue with OS access during BD playback which Jobs and Co. have a problem with.
The real nut of the issue though is that they don't want people buying BD discs at all. They want them renting and buying inferior versions of the same material as iTunes downloads, so that they actually see revenue on the media delivery.
It's going to be harder and harder for them to resist as Blu-ray has gained far more market share in the past 12 months than anyone had anticipated. It is really picking up steam and if Apple is not careful it will become a primary thing that MS will use to bash them with this holiday shopping season.
If Windows 7 ships with Blu-Ray playback and authoring support built in to the OS itself and Apple ships Snow Leopard with no Blu-Ray support of any kind, I am pretty certain that MS will beat Apple up on it quite a bit.
The drives are dropping in price too. DVD burners that combo with BD playback are going for as little as $99 in large quantities. That price will only continue going down, till, soon (next Spring refresh for Win7), this becomes something considered standard in every mid-level PC.
The real nut of the issue though is that they don't want people buying BD discs at all. They want them renting and buying inferior versions of the same material as iTunes downloads, so that they actually see revenue on the media delivery.
It's going to be harder and harder for them to resist as Blu-ray has gained far more market share in the past 12 months than anyone had anticipated. It is really picking up steam and if Apple is not careful it will become a primary thing that MS will use to bash them with this holiday shopping season.
If Windows 7 ships with Blu-Ray playback and authoring support built in to the OS itself and Apple ships Snow Leopard with no Blu-Ray support of any kind, I am pretty certain that MS will beat Apple up on it quite a bit.
The drives are dropping in price too. DVD burners that combo with BD playback are going for as little as $99 in large quantities. That price will only continue going down, till, soon (next Spring refresh for Win7), this becomes something considered standard in every mid-level PC.
Since you already have the hardware:
Would you like to try WinDVD Blu-Ray (free 30-day trial version)?
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1208530085664
Maybe it works better...?
Yeah, I mean like I said, Blu Ray (and DVD) playback uses your GPU if it can, and it can't through Parallels. It would be all stuck on your CPU, and then it doesn't have your CPUs full performance either through virtualization, so it sounds super iffy to me.
To the person complaining about PowerDVD 8 and 9-PowerDVD 7 seems to handle Blu Rays just fine-works just as you'd expect it to, so I'd think 8 and 9 would be just as good if not better.
Blu Ray playback is just completely mandatory for me now. I'm renting/buying Blu Rays more and more (and was pleasantly surprised that Star Trek Season 1 even uses Blu Ray features to nice effect!)
Hopefully OS X support is coming soon...
Im the one moaning about power dvd 9. Currently the windows 7 RC1 doesn't support the drivers, either on my 8800GT imac or 2009 Mac mini.
I reinstalled vista and now everything works fine.
As a last note powerdvd 9 doesn't work xp and nvidia either.
I hate windows
I reinstalled vista and now everything works fine.
As a last note powerdvd 9 doesn't work xp and nvidia either.
I hate windows
Oh, yeah I forgot to mention that I was using Vista, and that's the only OS I've ever used top play Blu Rays. XP is so ancient I don't know how well it could work, and of course 7 isn't finished, but presumably once it is should work as well as Vista, since it's basically the same thing.
From my brief experience it seemed to be as straight forward as playing DVDs, except if I'm remembering correctly you had to do it through PowerDVD, while with DVDs it lets you use that codec through Windows Media Player (not that that matters all that much). CPU utilization wasn't much different than for DVDs (though it was using my GPU, which is a solid 9650GT).
From my brief experience it seemed to be as straight forward as playing DVDs, except if I'm remembering correctly you had to do it through PowerDVD, while with DVDs it lets you use that codec through Windows Media Player (not that that matters all that much). CPU utilization wasn't much different than for DVDs (though it was using my GPU, which is a solid 9650GT).
Blue ray for Imac
This MIGHT happen faster than any of your think.
In the paper in the last few days, Fry's had a blue ray drive for the PC that was $ 199 !
I can recall the old days when a 1 meg HD for an Apple ][ cost $ 1,200.
Apple has always charged waaay too much for their stuff. The 5 1/4 inch drives for my Apple ][ GS cost me $ 90 a piece when I built them with my own 2 hands when I worked at Shugart in the early 1980s.
Shugart sold them to Apple for $ 200.
Apple put in a controller card, connector, and metal case with Apple logo.
Drives sold at a local Apple dealer for $ 600.
My Apple ][e enhanced cost me $ 1200 when we bought it brand new at Macy's.
If blue ray drives for the PC are this low, then perhaps demand will force the prices to drop for the Mac equivalent.
I am surprised to not see blue ray drives offered instead of cd r/w drives on new pcs.
http:falkie2008.blogspot.com
falkie2008@gmail.com
This MIGHT happen faster than any of your think.
In the paper in the last few days, Fry's had a blue ray drive for the PC that was $ 199 !
I can recall the old days when a 1 meg HD for an Apple ][ cost $ 1,200.
Apple has always charged waaay too much for their stuff. The 5 1/4 inch drives for my Apple ][ GS cost me $ 90 a piece when I built them with my own 2 hands when I worked at Shugart in the early 1980s.
Shugart sold them to Apple for $ 200.
Apple put in a controller card, connector, and metal case with Apple logo.
Drives sold at a local Apple dealer for $ 600.
My Apple ][e enhanced cost me $ 1200 when we bought it brand new at Macy's.
If blue ray drives for the PC are this low, then perhaps demand will force the prices to drop for the Mac equivalent.
I am surprised to not see blue ray drives offered instead of cd r/w drives on new pcs.
http:falkie2008.blogspot.com
falkie2008@gmail.com