Blu-Ray External Drive

[cwa107]

I just purchased an external USB Blu-Ray burner from Amazon. Although I haven't taken delivery of it yet, I thought it might be a good way to experiment a bit with some of the Blu Ray solutions that are starting to come onto the market for the Mac.

While Toast has had the capability to burn BR-Data discs for some time now, you may be aware that Blu-Ray uses some pretty sophisticated software on commercial movies that can make it difficult to play them on a Mac. So far, Apple has completely denounced Blu-Ray, in favor of their own HD formats sold on the iTunes Store.

But as Blu-Ray players come down in price and Blu-Ray movies become more and more ubiquitous, I'd imagine there will be plenty of interest in B-R moves on the Mac. So, I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread here to discuss some of the solutions for Blu-Ray chores on the Mac.

In particular, I intend to play around with VLC 2.0's new Blu-Ray codecs as well as MacGo's "Blu Ray Player" software. I'll discuss the trials and tribulations here in case anyone is interested.

 

[RavingMac]

Chris,
Thanks for starting this thread. I am adding it to my subscribed list.

 

[pendlewitch]

This interests me thank you. I already have an AV separates set-up with a Blu-Ray player hooked up and bought it primarily for enhanced image movie playback and the awesome Hi-Def soundtrack.

I'd never really thought about using Blu-Ray for storage, I don't actually store anything on DVD/CD anymore.

I always understood it to have been developed by Sony as a home movie format with some onerous DRM issues attached, including it would appear Mac compatibility. I bought a movie (The Bucket List) from iTunes last week as an experiment and streamed it to my AV set-up using ATV and the picture was stunning with the 5.1 a tad quiet. The audio probably had more to do with the ATV than anything else. If the standard version was that good through my system, I'm not sure that I even need Apple's HD version.

Also I'm not sure how having a blu-ray player on the Mac would be of benefit unless one had an AV audio system hooked up to it.

What I'm not clear about is how we can benefit from manipulating blu-ray unless we are making our own home movies with HD Video and Audio equipment because the actual disk itself is in essence just storage for all that heavy information?

 

[Slydude]

Thanks for starting this thread. Count me among those who have been putting off buying a blue ray burner. I have pretty much stopped storing data on DVDs but there's some things I just don't need to have stored on a hard drive.

 

[robduckyworth]

This is an interesting thread. FWIW, Ive tried VLC 2.0 on a PC to playback "The Horseman" (a rather old BR) and the playback is smooth, both audibly and visually. Gives me high hopes for the Mac version.

What will be interesting to see however, is how newer releases are managed - as far as I'm aware, every Blu Ray has its own encryption key, and in order to be decrypted, this key has to be added to the database. i may be wrong, but i was researching Linux Blu Ray playback methods a few weeks back and this seemed to be the issue. I had issues with the Jurassic Park Trilogy when that was released, may well have been the issue.

Hopefully the VideoLan team keep on top of this - may mean more frequent updates. That said, VLC is one of the best maintained apps Ive used.

 

[vansmith]

I'm sure the VideoLAN team can keep up with encryption methods - this is after all the group that developed the free libdvdcss library that allows playback of commercial DVDs. This makes me wonder however how the VideoLAN team is getting around the encryption methods present on BR discs.

 

[robduckyworth]

Looks like at the minute it is still having issues. Boardwalk Empire (released about two weeks ago) refuses to work due to an AACS library, that "my system does not have".

 

[robduckyworth]

So guys, how are you guys finding BR playback? any updates? hows VLC 2.0 for you?

 

[cwa107]

Totally forgot about this thread.

So, yeah, VLC was useless for playing B-R. I went ahead and returned the drive.

 

[robduckyworth]

Totally forgot about this thread.

So, yeah, VLC was useless for playing B-R. I went ahead and returned the drive.

Really? on Windows it seems to do an okay job. What issues did you have with it?