Solving the dilemna of no Blu-ray on current iMacs?

[RexTraverse]

Tech is moving away from old fashion media, blue ray will come and go and soon everything will be on the net via downloads and streams.. The DVD/Blue Ray Disc's will go the same way as 33 and 1/3 8track CD's VHS Beta45's

Im thinking of moving forward and jumping from DVD to HD downloads

So long as digital downloads and streams look as crappy as they currently do, there will be a market for hi-def physical media. I've seen what the overcompressed crap iTunes and DirecTV try to pass off as HD... it's awful. Barely above DVD quality. That may be adequate for some people... probably not a big deal or they can't tell the difference. But for some of us, we put a premium of picture quality and will pay for it. Paying a premium for a quality product is something no Apple user should find odd or unusual.

No doubt digital downloads will be able to provide the quality videophiles want eventually. But so long as most broadband in the US remains relatively slow (like DSL or low end cable speeds... <10Mbps-ish), that time is still years away.

 

[macshill]

Why oh why worry about Blu-Ray?
If you want it,
it is only a purchase away.

Don't sweat the details
if you want a new iMac
Don't get derailed.

Of more importance is the way you rhyme.
I can't understand your posts
And I don't have the time.

My new 27" iMac will be here soon
And I will be enjoying it
While some of you act like baffoons.

I hope you get out and enjoy life
there's so much more
then causing a strife

And soon you'll learn how to make a normal post
and stop bothering us
with your silly-written posts.

Very good. Now do it in a haiku.

 

[iMerlin]

personally, i dont want bluray playback support. it doesnt bother me that my mac cannot play a bluray movie. what bothers me is that we dont have a bluray drive.

i am a digital person, i convert my movies to a digital copy and watch them on my computer/ipod etc. i will do the same for my bluray movies, a 35GB movie wont bother me space wise, but i hate risking the longevity of my physical movies that i have paid for.

there are mac programs to convert the BD discs into a uncompressed .mkv file (which can then be down converted into .mp4 if you wish). perfect for me. perfect for the 27" iMac screen. perfect for my z5500s that i plan on purchasing

I was looking at that system also DoF, to funny man... we are about to get the same exact setup yo!
Actually, I think my wife put the kibosh on speakers. My office isnt enclosed in a room separate from the rest of the basement and my TV with 7.1 is on the other side of the basement. She was floored when I told her I was thinking about getting 5.1 for the new iMac. Hell, she's already having a hard time with the iMac!
Sorry, off topic. Back on...

I still dont mind not having the BD drive. Even though I can think of multiple uses. Ill be ok with getting an external one with maybe a firewire enclosure. Im thinking that will fit the bill.

 

[DoFoT9]

I was looking at that system also DoF, to funny man... we are about to get the same exact setup yo!
Actually, I think my wife put the kibosh on speakers. My office isnt enclosed in a room separate from the rest of the basement and my TV with 7.1 is on the other side of the basement. She was floored when I told her I was thinking about getting 5.1 for the new iMac. Hell, she's already having a hard time with the iMac!
Sorry, off topic. Back on...

haha quit stalking me ive convinced my girl to let me get them, i still have no idea how. now to save up for them...

I still dont mind not having the BD drive. Even though I can think of multiple uses. Ill be ok with getting an external one with maybe a firewire enclosure. Im thinking that will fit the bill.

im not sure what i want yet. internal or external.. hmmm.. the iMacs can use 12.7mm BD, but i wonder how much more they cost then the conventional 3.5". i completely forgot about my current external FW drive! i will turn that into a BD 3.5" drive! thanks for bringing it up i was going to use my hackintosh.

 

[iMerlin]

haha quit stalking me ive convinced my girl to let me get them, i still have no idea how. now to save up for them...


im not sure what i want yet. internal or external.. hmmm.. the iMacs can use 12.7mm BD, but i wonder how much more they cost then the conventional 3.5". i completely forgot about my current external FW drive! i will turn that into a BD 3.5" drive! thanks for bringing it up i was going to use my hackintosh.

See, I knew I would provide something useful to this community at some point!

I have a pretty decent HDD in my PC which Im officially DECOMMISSIONING! Im still trying to decide what to do with it. I thought about formatting it and just using it as a server with Linux on there... or pull the drives, pop them in an external and have a few extra GB laying around if I need it. I think Im going with the last one.

 

[DoFoT9]

See, I knew I would provide something useful to this community at some point!

haha that was my main point of coming here. i love this community.

I have a pretty decent HDD in my PC which Im officially DECOMMISSIONING! Im still trying to decide what to do with it. I thought about formatting it and just using it as a server with Linux on there... or pull the drives, pop them in an external and have a few extra GB laying around if I need it. I think Im going with the last one.

the last one sounds alright. i just convinced dad to think about buying 3x1TB drives to setup as a RAID.

 

[Nermal]

I have a pretty decent HDD in my PC which Im officially DECOMMISSIONING! Im still trying to decide what to do with it.

Put it in the Hac? Or is that the same machine?

 

[DoFoT9]

Put it in the Hac? Or is that the same machine?

uuuhhh... why did you quote me lol?

 

[camgrant84]

I don't how not having Blu-Ray is a problem?

Honestly, how many times do you use Blu-Ray? Except for odd movie or two, it's useless. All that trouble and risk for something so minor and insignificant.

What about the people in my situation? I no longer buy DVD's because everything else I own has bluray in it. Can I just not watch any of these on my imac?

I'll no doubt get bored one night and try one of these in it.
http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/computer/storage/optical/models/UJ-135A.asp

Assuming OSX can recognise it as a DVD drive I see no bother in booting to Windows to use the bluray part..

 

[DoFoT9]

What about the people in my situation? I no longer buy DVD's because everything else I own has bluray in it. Can I just not watch any of these on my imac?

I'll no doubt get bored one night and try one of these in it.
http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/computer/storage/optical/models/UJ-135A.asp

Assuming OSX can recognise it as a DVD drive I see no bother in booting to Windows to use the bluray part..

that will work fine! macs can recognise bluray discs and burn to them, but not in the movie scheme of things - only in data formats (e.g. backups).

 

[mrsir2009]

Why do you have to have Blu Ray in iMacs anyway? For watching movies you can just watch them on your TV. And you can still play Blu Ray disks on a DVD player like in the iMac, you just don't get the full HD, which you don't really need anyway...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but why do you actually need Blu Ray drives?

 

[DoFoT9]

Why do you have to have Blu Ray in iMacs anyway? For watching movies you can just watch them on your TV. And you can still play Blu Ray disks on a DVD player like in the iMac, you just don't get the full HD, which you don't really need anyway...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but why do you actually need Blu Ray drives?

sorry, but you cant put a BD into a DVD player and expect it to work.

 

[mrsir2009]

sorry, but you cant put a BD into a DVD player and expect it to work.

Oh... Sorry it must be the other way round. Can you watch a DVD on a Blu Ray drive?

 

[DoFoT9]

Oh... Sorry it must be the other way round. Can you watch a DVD on a Blu Ray drive?

yup you can do that one

 

[Nermal]

uuuhhh... why did you quote me lol?

In post 29 you said you have a Hac. In post 31 you said you needed to decide what to do with your PC's hard drive. I suggested putting the drive into your Hac, if they're different computers. Got it?

 

[unamused]

i dont understand how Apple can advertise how nice the display looks for media and NOT even give an option for blu-ray. Sure i understand they want to push digital media but the fact is, as someone already mentioned, there has yet to be some sort of downloadable content that is even close to scratching the image quality BR provides without taking 40 gigs of HD space.

at least let us plug in BR devices with an adapter for the minidisplay port.

 

[DoFoT9]

In post 29 you said you have a Hac. In post 31 you said you needed to decide what to do with your PC's hard drive. I suggested putting the drive into your Hac, if they're different computers. Got it?

i understand that yup.

but if you look at the quote, it says its from my name i.e. "DoFoT9". but if you read the contents of the quote the reply is actually from iMerlin!

thats what has gotten me confused. got it?

oh! wait! i see. i didnt correctly put the quote in quote marks! re-read post 31 and you will see what i mean. sorry for all the confusion.

 

[NJRonbo]

Bryan,

Very funny! Applause! Well done!

 

[TheBearman]

Why do you have to have Blu Ray in iMacs anyway? For watching movies you can just watch them on your TV. And you can still play Blu Ray disks on a DVD player like in the iMac, you just don't get the full HD, which you don't really need anyway...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but why do you actually need Blu Ray drives?

What non-magnetic storage would you suggest to backup a 250GB iTunes library? How about 300GB of photos?

I know some folks like to simply use an external hard drive for their backup but I really want something a little more stable.

BD dual layer will hold about 50gb compared to DVD which holds about 4.7gb.

 

[Fishrrman]

This is a guess, and _only_ a guess, but...

I'll predict that the appearance of the "video-in" capabilities on the 27" iMac has got _something_ to do with BluRay.

I would expect to see some kind of "external solution" (or perhaps several) announced before too long that will enable external BluRay players (and perhaps recorders) to be used with the video-in port.

These will appear either as "standalone solutions" (external BD player with copy-protection-decoding built it), or perhaps in the form of a "dongle" which can be inserted between any external BD player and the iMac to take care of BluRay's copy protection schemes.

Of course, there is no _software_ to play BluRay content "on the Mac side" just yet. But I'll also predict that Apple _already has it completed_, waiting in the wings, so to speak.

- John

 

[unamused]

This is a guess, and _only_ a guess, but...

I'll predict that the appearance of the "video-in" capabilities on the 27" iMac has got _something_ to do with BluRay.

I would expect to see some kind of "external solution" (or perhaps several) announced before too long that will enable external BluRay players (and perhaps recorders) to be used with the video-in port.

These will appear either as "standalone solutions" (external BD player with copy-protection-decoding built it), or perhaps in the form of a "dongle" which can be inserted between any external BD player and the iMac to take care of BluRay's copy protection schemes.

Of course, there is no _software_ to play BluRay content "on the Mac side" just yet. But I'll also predict that Apple _already has it completed_, waiting in the wings, so to speak.

- John

i hope this is the case... but i really wish they would have taken it one step further and just added an HDMI port on the back. (this obviously doesnt solve the issue with those that want BR drives for backing up stuff, but at least we could really make use of the gorgeous display)

 

[AppleFan360]

I've been using an external Blu-Ray player with my Mac for quite sometime now. Granted, I can't play them but I can burn them and do just about anything else. I don't watch movies on my Mac anyhow.

If Apple ever does offer Blu-Ray support, I'm sure they will allow external drives to work.

 

[Cave Man]

You can already read/write Blu-ray discs with Macs, just get any drive and Toast.

You can also watch Blu-ray movies on Macs, provided you're willing to rip them to your hard drive. Most Blu-ray movies can even be compressed to fit on a dual-layer DVD disc as an m4v or mkv without appreciable loss of video quality. Hoops to go through, but not impossible to do.

 

[ViViDboarder]

On the topic of whether the lack of one is an issue with buying a current iMac...

No. When OSX supports it you can easily upgrade or buy an external drive. This was mentioned above.

As far as the necessity of blueray... I can see why people want it. It's much easier to rent HD videos on BD than on USB. In fact... that's not even offered at the moment. Also, distribution of HD video is easier on BD than on multiple DVD-DL disks or on USB. If you want to play 1080p from a USB drive you'll still have to find someone with a powerful enough computer hooked up to an HDTV.

For backing up files... Come on... I have DVD's and DVD-DL disks and I haven't backed up to optical drives since using a CD-RW back when my biggest HDD was 20gb!!! I wouldn't really consider optical storage safer than magnetic either. One scratch and it's corrupted or trashed. Also, the cost of BD disks is more than buying a small external drive or even getting an extra SSD for backup if you're worried about the moving parts.

I mean... If you really want to have a bunch of BD disks lying around with dates on them and party like it's 1997, then go right ahead. I'll stick with redundant storage on magnetic media for easy searching and recovery.

 

[Cave Man]

For backing up files... Come on... I have DVD's and DVD-DL disks and I haven't backed up to optical drives since using a CD-RW back when my biggest HDD was 20gb!!! I wouldn't really consider optical storage safer than magnetic either. One scratch and it's corrupted or trashed.

I have a rather large number of irreplaceable files burned onto three Blu-ray discs, which are now sitting in my safe deposit box. There is a need, just not a big need. And I do trust optical discs more than hard drives. I've never had an OD failure, but I've had 4 or 5 HD failures.