Many were disappointed that Apple decided not to integrate Blu-ray support in its new lines of notebooks—not, perhaps, as disappointed as they were about the lack of FireWire, but still.
Amex Digital has launched a pair of slick-looking external USB Blu-ray drives to fill that void. The $289 BDP-2 plays back Blu-ray discs, while an extra $100 gets you a Blu-ray recorder—both also play and record CDs and DVDs. They require an Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, and either an NVIDIA GF8000 Series, ATI HD2000 Series, or better graphics processor.
However, while the press release claims that the Blu-ray player is compatible with OS X, color me a bit suspicious. Because OS X itself doesn’t support Blu-ray out of the box; you’ll definitely need Roxio’s Toast 9 if you want to do any sort of Blu-ray burning, and I believe there’s still no way to play back consumer Blu-ray movie discs on the Mac. So, caveat emptor.
Steve Jobs is dissing Blu Ray because he probably has a large collection of HD DVD movies and HD DVD player.
The HD DVD format was promoted by Microsoft.. you really think what you're saying is plausible?
@HDaddict, yeah as Tomos mentioned, it's highly unlikely that SJ has an HD DVD collection.
This is because Apple is a member of the Blu-ray Association as is Disney (of whom SJ is a major share holder).
Cheers
"color me a bit suspicious. Because OS X itself doesn't support Blu-ray out of the box"
On their website they say you can use VLC media player.
Some people just don't do the resurch and re-publish other people's stories...
@amusicsite: You're right that the vendor's page says VLC is needed for Blu-ray compatibility. However, next time you might consider doing your own research, which would have revealed that VLC *doesn't* play commercial Blu-ray discs. Yes, it is compatible with the video format that Blu-ray uses (or at least one of them, H.264), but there are also the issues of copy protection to consider. Basically, if you burned video to Blu-ray in H.264 using Toast or Premiere, you could play that back in VLC, but my understanding is that if you want to buy a Blu-ray movie from Best Buy and pop it in, you're going to be out of luck.