Blu-ray hits bumps in the road to HD market dominance

Blu-ray player sales dropped 40 percent earlier this year and do not seem to have recovered yet. Aside from soaring PlayStation 3 sales, Blu-ray is struggling to take advantage of HD DVD’s demise. Read More...

Blu-ray recordable drive for Macs

Is it time to finally put your HD mountain biking documentary on Blu-ray? Apple upgrade vendor MCE Technologies announced availability of a totally Mac-compatible Blu-ray recordable drive for Mac Pro and Power Mac.The $499 (internal) drive is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.2 and later, requiring no special drivers for burning -- just install it in your Mac Pro or Power Mac bay, pop in blank Blu-ray media, and you're ready to roll. The drive does both single-layer (6X BD-R or 2X BD-RE) and dual-layer (4X BD-R, 2X BD-RE) burning for capacities of 25GB or 50GB respectively. That's up to 50,000 photos, 12,500 music tracks, or 4 hours of HD video.There's a $599 version bundled with Roxio Toast 9 and the Toast BD//HD Plugin, as well as an external drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 ports for $749.To write professional Blu-ray discs that can play on set-top Blu-ray players or Sony PS3, you'll need Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 Encore along with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 or Final Cut Pro. Basic Blu-ray movies can be burned with Roxio Toast 9 and the BD/HD Plugin.[via The Mac Observer]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

MCE brings the Blu-ray technology to the Mac

Section: Mac + Computers, Desktops, PeripheralsThe Blu-ray technology finally made it to Mac courtesy of MCE’s new Blu-ray Internal Drive for Apple Mac Pro and PowerMac, simply called the SuperDrive. This MCE Super Drive features 6X Blu-ray write-speeds and 16X DVD recording speed. It plays both Blu-ray and HD-DVD media and fully supports Lightscribe. It can record to 25GB single-layer and 50GB dual-layer discs. In addition, the MCE SuperDrive is also compatible with all variants of both DVD and CD recordable media, includes DVD±R/RW + Dual/Double Layer, DVD-RAM, and CD-R and CD-RW. This SuperDrive will come packed with Toast 8 Titatinium and a 25GB Blu-ray rewritable disc. All this for an SRP of $699. This BU burner runs with Windows XP/Vista on a Boot Camp partition and requires Mac units running OS X 10.4 or higher. Product [MCE] Via [Electronista] Full Story » | Written by Arnold Zafra for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Rumor: Apple’s Blu-Ray plans revealed

Anyone want a rumor? We got one, cheap. Sighting “a source” and “info gleaned from various non disclosures”, faithful Macenstein tipster Doug has written us with what he claims is Apple’s forthcoming plan to offer a new Blu-Ray burner/NAS device geared toward video professionals and tying into the Final Cut Server line. As with [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Rumor: Apple’s Blu-Ray plans revealed", url: "http://macenstein.com/default/archives/1287" });

Microsoft first with native Blu-ray support

Microsoft on Friday tipped its hand and revealed itself as the first major operating system developer to incorporate more complete Blu-ray support into its platform. A test version of Microsoft's Feature Pack for Storage will give Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008 the option of burning Blu-ray discs directly from the operating system,...

Computerworld: Blu-ray beats HD DVD—now what?

Now that Sony's Blu-ray Disc DVD format has beat out Toshiba's HD DVD , the question arises: Just what spoils are there? Computerworld’sLucas Mearian answers that and other questions.