The Mac and the DVD successor
Apple is building a Blu-ray drives in its computers, and there is no OS
X-compatible player software for DVD's successor. While Macs are quite
useless for HD video, because the hardware is powerful and quiet enough
for home cinema. We have tried, how far you can get when it comes to
Blu-ray on Mac OS X, Windows, and when you need what use virtual machines.
The Mac mini is a perfect media center PC for your living room, the new
iMac, with its high-resolution screen is also good for watching HD
movies. Although Apple since 2005 with the "Blu-ray Disc Association"
sits, Steve Jobs has decided that his company is the successor to DVD is
not supported until further notice. Movies in HD format, Mac users could
finally buy from the iTunes Store, he says. But it also goes without
Apple's blessing, albeit tedious.
Step by step
We tried two different hardware combinations with one internal and one
external drive. First, we searched for a slim-line slot-in drive with
SATA connection, to convert a two-year-old Mac mini (2.0 GHz, Core 2
Duo), and have the time of testing only when Sony found it. Representing
internal Blu-ray drives we have tested the Optiarc BC-5600S,
manufactured out of date, but still occasionally shown. It is a combo
drive that allows the CD on the DVD to the Blu-ray reads all media, but
can only burn CDs and DVDs. With its height of 12.5 millimeters, the way
it fits into any of the MacBooks, it sits in the mini as it made -
including the six screw holes. The installation is fairly experienced
hobbyists no problem to open the case you need a sharpened spatula as
sharp as possible.
As CD and DVD burners in the OS X interface, the Sony drive worked fine,
and booting from the installation DVD (Mac OS X or Windows) worked.
However, we could use either on Snow Leopard Disk Utility, "Disc
Burning" in System Profiler still call without provoking a crash. iTunes
freezes when clicking "Burn CD" on up, too. Music CDs, we could only
burn if the CD was first inserted and then came the firing command.
Toast 10 crashed again after entering the serial number. The virtualizer
Parallels 5.1 did not work after installation. BDMV and AVCHD Blu-ray
read the operating system, with the VLC media player 1.1, we were able
to play DRM-free movies, but only without menus.
Under a booted via Boot Camp 32-bit Windows Vista, the Optiarc drive
worked perfectly, burned media with the operating system functions or
Nero 10 and played from any copy-protected Blu-ray movies. This
required, however, a considerable extra costs associated with playback
software: Corel WinDVD Pro (70 €), ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 (90 €)
or CyberLink's PowerDVD Ultra 10 (90 €). They pointed to the HD video
without problems on a HDCP-enabled monitor. In all three cases we need
to use mouse and keyboard. With WinDVD settled without additional
drivers using the small Apple remote control only the volume, pause the
TotalMedia Theatre and PowerDVD, also chapters and jump - though we
pressed the menu button, jumped on iTunes.
As a second hardware combination, we tried it with an aluminum current
Mac mini and the Blu-ray Burner Sony BWU-100A in an external USB
enclosure. This pairing had no problems with Mac OS X with iTunes yet,
with toast, the booting operating system disks, or with Parallels. When
you insert a Blu-ray blank opened a window and asked, as with CDs and
DVDs by using the request. Burning a data Blu-ray in the Finder worked
without any problems, just as with toast 10th To create a video Blu-ray,
it requires the 20-euro "Toast 10 HD / BD Plug-in". Also, the
copy-protected Blu-ray purchase worked with all three suitable for
Windows programs. From a running Windows under Parallels, we could not
bring himself after some tinkering with the settings, copy-protected
Blu-ray movies to work. The external Blu-ray burner was incidentally
also the older Mac mini and probably in the same way also in harmony
with all Macs from 2-GHz Intel CPU and at least internal nVidia graphics.
Used on a trial basis, a little older and not HDCP-enabled Eizo monitor
the films were shown only for Corel's WinDVD 10th The other two players
complained that the system is not HDCP compliant and completed the film
is playing after the opening credits, because they copy the chain could
not form completely. Also a change from HDMI to Mini DisplayPort did not
change the result. Whether it's own monitor, but also the graphics card
in the computer HDCP-capable, answered the free Windows tool Cyberlink
BD Advisor.
Conclusion
Watch Blu-ray movies on your Mac is given the cost of Windows,
additional player software and drive little sense. A Blu-ray player for
your TV comes cheaper. In comparison to movie files on the hard disk
fiddling with purchased Blu-ray movies for Mac users is much too
complicated. As long as Apple does not his rejection of the DVD
successor thinks this will probably remain that way. Blu-ray discs as a
long term archive, however, can also use Mac users easily.
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