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Blu-ray work around via bootcamp?

B

bob vansteel

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 13, 2008
159
0
So i am definatly getting myself a new iMac, but there is one thing would love to have that the iMacs wont be getting for a while...and thats a Blu-ray drive. So here is my question/idea: couldn't i get an external Blu-ray drive made for pc's, hook it up, install vista/xp with bootcamp, and use the external blu-ray drive as normal on my windows partition!?

I mean technically it sounds like it would work(not in OSX obviously though)...seeing as windows will have all the appropriate drivers and such.

So please tell me if this will work, or if you already do this and how well it performs on an imac.
 
bob vansteel said:
So i am definatly getting myself a new iMac, but there is one thing would love to have that the iMacs wont be getting for a while...and thats a Blu-ray drive. So here is my question/idea: couldn't i get an external Blu-ray drive made for pc's, hook it up, install vista/xp with bootcamp, and use the external blu-ray drive as normal on my windows partition!?

I mean technically it sounds like it would work(not in OSX obviously though)...seeing as windows will have all the appropriate drivers and such.

So please tell me if this will work, or if you already do this and how well it performs on an imac.
Click to expand...

No it won't work, because the monitor is not HDCP certified.

Don
 
bob vansteel said:
ahhhh I see now! Thanks!

Well im going out on limb here but could you use an external monitor that is?
Click to expand...

On an iMac, doubtful. I don't know how you'd hook it up. You would also need a HDCP-capable video card, which I'm not sure any Macs have (but they may).

On a side note, this really is a major PITA by Sony. They act as if some new DRM is going to stop people from pirating movies. All that stuff does is make someone take an extra week to work around it and keeps people who want to as legitimately as you can rip the discs onto a computer for personal use. Could you imagine the craphole the music industry would be in if CDs had all that DRM on them?
 
Michael CM1 said:
On an iMac, doubtful. I don't know how you'd hook it up. You would also need a HDCP-capable video card, which I'm not sure any Macs have (but they may).

On a side note, this really is a major PITA by Sony. They act as if some new DRM is going to stop people from pirating movies. All that stuff does is make someone take an extra week to work around it and keeps people who want to as legitimately as you can rip the discs onto a computer for personal use. Could you imagine the craphole the music industry would be in if CDs had all that DRM on them?
Click to expand...

It's one of the reasons why I haven't yet made the plunge into the macworld. I'm left feeling that for every simplicity a mac offers over a windows, windows offers a simplicity that the mac doesn't.
 
I think a BD-ROM drive is my only wish for the iMac as it stands at the moment. It would be great to utilize the huge screen size and decent resolution, not to mention using it with front row.

It would instantly compete with the PS3 as the best Blu-ray player due to the inbuilt screen. Saves people buying the HDTV to go with their new player. Could be a major seller in these circumstances.

Then for the Mac Pros i think it has become essential to add a Blu-ray burner so that small production companies can burn off HD products for clients. Any of the bigger studios will send off the final export to publishers so that isn't so much of a problem.
 
Michael CM1 said:
On an iMac, doubtful. I don't know how you'd hook it up. You would also need a HDCP-capable video card, which I'm not sure any Macs have (but they may).

On a side note, this really is a major PITA by Sony. They act as if some new DRM is going to stop people from pirating movies. All that stuff does is make someone take an extra week to work around it and keeps people who want to as legitimately as you can rip the discs onto a computer for personal use. Could you imagine the craphole the music industry would be in if CDs had all that DRM on them?
Click to expand...


According to newegg, ATI HD 2600 XT vid cards are HDCP compliant. I'd be surprised if the super special mac edition wasn't. As far as hooking it up, wouldn't USB 2.0 provide the necessary bandwidth? If not USB 2.0 then one of the firewire ports should.

I'd considered getting an external BR player when I was looking at a Mac Pro to use with a dual-boot box. Went with a PS3 instead.
 
Yes HD2600's have the HDCP circuitry built into the GPU, BUT the manufacturer must enable it's functionality during the integration with their hardware. Apple does not claim HDCP in their imacs, so I doubt that they ever enabled at the design level. I agree though, that the iMac would make a kickbutt AIO bluray player.
 
I read online at a forum of someone successfully claiming to be able to watch blu-ray movies on the macbook pro with the nvidia 8600m via bootcamp.

I believe there are ways to rip blu-ray movies now too with a program called dvdany or something. I wonder if its possible to rip a movie to your hard drive with the encryption removed, and then re-encode it to an mpeg file and then be able to play it back.
 
MVApple said:
I read online at a forum of someone successfully claiming to be able to watch blu-ray movies on the macbook pro with the nvidia 8600m via bootcamp.

I believe there are ways to rip blu-ray movies now too with a program called dvdany or something. I wonder if its possible to rip a movie to your hard drive with the encryption removed, and then re-encode it to an mpeg file and then be able to play it back.
Click to expand...

The program is AnyDVD. It removes software protection. You still need a program to strip off the extras such as CloneDVD. These are both windows based apps. Both support HDDVD and BR.
 
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