Amex's Blu-Ray SuperDrive for MacBooks
Blu-Ray may indeed be — to half-remember Steve Jobs brilliantly vivid metaphor — "a veiny, swollen sack of torsion-twisted hurt," but that's not to say consumers don't want that particular stiletto ground. Amex's portable Super Multi Drive stuffs a Blu-Ray drive capable of burning single layer BD-RE/-R discs, as well as standard DVDs and CDs.
It connects via USB, and comes in the usual shape of such design conscious peripherals, coming in the same dimensions as the Mac Minis and Apple TVs... not that you'll actually be able to plug this into those, since according to Amex's own system requirements, neither of those computers are actually capable of supporting the thing.
Either way, it's an attractive little drive. The player-only flavor retails for $289, where as the recorder will cost $100 more.
Portable Blu-Ray Super Multi Drive for MacBook [Amex Digital via Gizmodo]
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How do they meet the DRM requirements for Blu-Ray playback without modifying OSX at the kernel level?
Jobs himself rejected Blu-Ray because of the technical cost that compliance would impose on the performance and stability of the OS (chewing up CPU cycles on constant integrity checks, and making the system more fragile and susceptible to failure), and many of Windows Vista's problems come from the engineering changes made to it to allow it to legally play Blu-Ray content.
Playback isn't supported on OS-X. On a Mac these are data only.
Bluray on laptops is silly talk. You can't see a difference between Bluray and upscaled DVD on a 14" screen.
That said, VideoLAN doesn't yet have the bluraybackup AACS decryption libraries included yet, AFAIK. But that's just a matter of some programmers stepping up to the plate and put forth the effort. Same goes for adding Blu-Ray ripping support to Handbrake.
This is an odd blanket statement to make. It's not "all of OSX" to blame. The main holdup is for VideoLAN to support Blu-Ray, then people can just plug in these portable drives, or those with technical ability can crack it open and swap out the internal drive for this one. Bullshit. I can easily see the difference between 480p and 720p content on my 15" MBP; though 1080p only shines on the 1080p native resolution 17" MBP.The 13" MacBook has 800 vertical pixels, more than enough for 720p.
@Zulu:
Bullshit. I can easily see the difference between 480p and 720p content on my 15" MBP
Bluray is 1080p, so you're comment comparing 480p to 720p is not relevant.
The 13" MacBook has 800 vertical pixels
'zactly my point. Downscaled bluray will not look noticably different than upscaled DVD on a little bitty notebook LCD.
As I said, even the difference between 480p and 720p is, in fact, very noticeable.
I think these are intended mostly for data use; 50gb on a removable disc is very handy indeed, whereas playback of a Blu-Ray movie isn't that exciting to me.
Now if the re-recordable media would just come into a reasonable price range. Right now it makes more sense, cost-wise, to score cheap laptop hard drives and USB cases.
I *do* think you'd notice a difference between a 720x480 DVD image upscaled to 1440 x 800 and a 1920x1080 blu-ray image downscaled to 1440 x 800. I can tell the difference between a 640x480 still photo upscaled and a higher resolution still that's been downscaled. The latter is remarkably clearer.
One thing to keep in mind is viewing distance; if you're only about two or three feet from the laptop screen, imperfections in the 480p image are going to be more obvious than, say, a 32" screen that's halfway across the room.
#3 posted by mappo
What if you've just purchased the latest copy of [Generic Hollywood Blockbuster] to watch on your giant LCD home theatre with surround sound plus chairs that electrocute you whenever something exciting happens on BluRay. Then 3 months later feel like watching the movie again, only this time you're on a train going somewhere and don't happen to have your giant LCD home theatre with surround sound plus electric chairs.
Should you go out and buy the DVD version or waste hours of your time cracking the DRM to make some other version of said [Generic Hollywood Blockbuster]?