Amex Digital does what Steve won't, intros portable Blu-ray burner for Macs
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 16th 2008 7:10PM
posted Oct 16th 2008 7:10PM
[Thanks, A1]
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LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOFJIKAJFLKDFDFDFD
Zing!
Apple is so stupid. I really wish they'd grow up and realize that big boy computers should be able to support whatever media format I can throw at it. I mean really. I don't care if Blu-Ray is a big bag of sweaty balls for Jobs; they shouldn't be the ones deciding what to support. At this point, they should have had HD-DVD and Blu-Ray support out the door and let the consumer decide what to use through 3rd party components.
This is all coming from an avid kool-aid drinker.
Someone mentioned in another post that the reason why Apple didn't include Blu Ray on the new Macbook is because the only drives available would have been too thick for the new designs. I don't know, but it may well be a mistake. I do love the new Macbook/Pro design but if it's a simple matter of not fitting perhaps they would have been better off to make a design that would accept Blu Ray as an option. Will there be thinner drives and will Apple include them as an option later?
@happy_penguin:
I must disagree with you 10 times over. Of course Jobs has a right to choose what medias to support, and which medias to NOT support: it's HIS company. ANd his company is doing just fine without your suggestions.
Why would Apple even WANT to support Blu-ray? Another DISK media that's going to be outdated in 4-6 years? People converted their VHS collections to DVD, and now you're pushing people to upgrade all their DVDs to Blu-ray? And then something new after that?! No thanks. I'd rather Apple come up with a digital download concept, where I buy a movie for $20, and then when higher res stuff comes out, I can optionally pay $5 to upgrade the quality from 1080p to 1920p (or whatever).
Think about the FUTILITY of all of this disk media storage, in comparison to pure digital media...
@Chad
Actually, Apple is not his company....it is owned by shareholders - he is not the majority shareholder. So my hoipe is that he is doing the right thing for his owners and nto for himslef.
The reality is that as long as the stock price keeps going up (current global market fark ups aside) the woners feel he is doing a great job.
"Chad Zeluff @ Oct 17th 2008 12:19PM
@happy_penguin:
I must disagree with you 10 times over. Of course Jobs has a right to choose what medias to support, and which medias to NOT support: it's HIS company. ANd his company is doing just fine without your suggestions."
Ummm.... I'm just an Mac user like any other Mac user and no they are not doing just fine without suggestions. It's the suggestions of the users that power Apple's design decisions and their success.
"Why would Apple even WANT to support Blu-ray? Another DISK media that's going to be outdated in 4-6 years? People converted their VHS collections to DVD, and now you're pushing people to upgrade all their DVDs to Blu-ray? And then something new after that?! No thanks. I'd rather Apple come up with a digital download concept, where I buy a movie for $20, and then when higher res stuff comes out, I can optionally pay $5 to upgrade the quality from 1080p to 1920p (or whatever)."
Because people are asking for it? What makes you so certain that Blu Ray will be gone? I know that there are many "experts" out there who suggest it will be, but how do you know? CD hasn't gone away after 23 years, DVD is still around after some fifteen years. How about the problem of the infrastructure of the internet in the United States. Do you really believe that you can get the same content from the internet that you can from Blu Ray that easily? And all of that may be irrelevant anyway. Blu Ray is also not just for movies. It's a pretty damn good storage medium as well.
"Think about the FUTILITY of all of this disk media storage, in comparison to pure digital media..."
What FUTILITY? For most people I know who don't buy Blu Ray movies the reason is that they still buy DVD, not that they buy downloadable content. Such content is no doubt an important segment but don't count out physical discs just yet.
because he is stupid
Play them using what?
1. Load Windows using Boot Camp.
2. Install WinDVD.
3. ???
4. Profit... I mean watch BD Movies...
damn, good point... Were I the disk reader manufacturer, I'd engineer it to output the data in a similar fashion as the external superdrive for MBA with some onboard data conversion... but I'm not an engineer, so if that is even possible, I do not know.
4x - 8x for DVD?!
Keep in mind this is probably a USB-powered drive, and anything more than 8x would require both a) more power, and b) more data speed than USB can provide, respectively.
I don't see anywhere that it can burn DVD-RAM discs.
Can the USB interface really handle Blu-Ray burning and playback?
It worked for HD-DVD on Xbox 360.
BluRay playback maxes out at 54mbits I think.
USB = 480Mb/s
Blu-ray = 432Mbit/s @ 12x speed, 288 @ 8x
But USB 2.0 only reaches 20 mb/ps in the real world so .....
Not only that, but it looks thinner than the MBA Superdrive.
She never said that. At least to my face.
Look at the image closer, there is a little bit of a base underneath the black that is silver. It looks about the same thickness.
It does look pretty good, especially since it's USB bus powered.
If somebody could find out which drive they're using, I'm sure it's possible to fit it in to the existing MB/MBP enclosure in stead of the superdrive (which is now SATA-based). It looks thin enough (from here, admittedly some distance away), and is slot-loading.
Yeah, the stupid two-tone color scheme makes for an optical illusion.. it's not really that thin.
And that ain't no reflection either.
Well it just looks like Apple is doing what others are doing and giving Blu-Ray a hard time, in hopes that it never takes off, so digital distribution succeeds. Both microsoft and apple make a point not to support Blu-Ray, and they both just happen to have digital distribution channels (xbox live and, duh, itunes). This of course makes me happy - I don't like sony, and i don't like physical media. I also think paying $30-40 for a blu-ray movie is absolutely ridiculous. Until DRM free downloadable HD movies become available through traditional channels like DRM free MP3's have, i'll keep investing where i have been - hard drive space and a fast connection for bittorrent. Now that i can buy DRM free tracks though, i do actually pay for most of my music, and i wouldn't mind doing it for movies too. Oh well, they'll figure it out some day...
-Taylor
Absolutely, 100% right.
Couldn't agree more.
I'm not going to go to another format, yet again.
The future format is: file on your hard drive, or more so: in the "cloud".
Not BluRay.
BluRay is dead already, in my eyes, as physical media will be "dead" in a couple of years.
Apple is planing on towards that: MacBook Air, anyone?
See, here's where Steve is missing the boat. iTunes is great and all if I want to *WATCH* movies (and you happen to have an internet connection where you are at a given moment). But if you're a content creator, and you're using that fancy new copy of Final Cut Pro HD you've really got no way to burn it and play it quickly.
Too bad downloadable media is GARBAGE QUALITY. Blu-Ray already isn't that great, but look at the fraudulent "HD" that on-line services are troweling out.
Everyone who's cheerleading the demise of physical media is ushering out the last vestiges of media quality. Music is destroyed with dynamic compression, and video is destroyed by data compression. It's not that downloadable content CAN'T be good, but that it WON'T be because there are no standards and nobody stands up and demands high quality anymore anyway.
So enjoy the future of "digital quality", in which there's no audio or video that warrants anything better than $5 earbuds and a 320x240 portable player.
I haven't spent more than $20 on a blu-ray ever, I usually get them for less than $17.
@Tom
Well if you have a system that is appropriate for watching movies from iTunes, why do you need to burn your movie in the first place? Right now not everyone has a PC hooked up to their TV, but as extenders an HTPCs become more popular, you can just throw your movie from Final Cut Pro right onto a USB stick (since high-gig flash memory is getting so cheap, you will have one big enough soon, or just use a HDD) and bring it with you. Hell, most TVs nowadays have USB ports on them. I doubt my TV would play a high quality HD file from USB, but that will be common in a couple of years. Till then, yeah, Blu-ray might have some niche appeal to content creators, but for the rest of us, it just sucks!
-Taylor
Well said information central. I couldnt have put it any better. Id take some high quality physical media over any downloadable service any time.
Apple is on the Blu-Ray Board of Directors, why would they conspire to give it a bad name?
A season of Weeds on Blu-Ray = $23.95, same season on iTunes = $29.85.
I strongly prefer the Blu-Ray option.
A season of Weeds on Blu-Ray = $23.95, same season on iTunes = $29.85.
I strongly prefer the Blu-Ray option.
@Information Central
I don't know where you get your HD content online but i download my files in 1080p. It runs 10-12GB a file, but i have 3TB of storage so i don't care (500gig drives are only $70 now ya know).
Anyway, they look gorgeous, and i can even stream them over my (wired) network just fine. My HTPC is actually my roommate's old dell, and aside from the atrocity of not having a good sound card (it's on my list) the damn thing works great, and my High def movies are gorgeous, and DRM free, so my library won't go to shit in a few years. You know i have some DVD's from the late 90's that are already skipping due to disk rot? Too bad i couldn't back those up, because circumventing CSS protection is illegal...
I only download movies in HD now, and i have no trouble finding things. Yeah there are lame services that try to call 480p high def, but look, whatever market forces drove people to want HD tv's and blu-ray will have the same effect on downloadable media, and the available high def content will become the same or better than blu-ray. I know it's possible because i download 1080p movies no problem now. Most places don't have servers strong enough to serve that kind of content yet but it will happen, and i can't wait till it does.
-Taylor
I'm sorry, Taylor, but 4Mbit 720p/1080p videos don't hold a candle to 40Mbit Blu-rays.
Dorm roomers and torrenters can keep kidding themselves, but physical media will always be available... and it will always be superior. As a business model, file-based video content will always require DRM-based programs to play - which require a certain OS or a certain graphics card. With physical media, I am guaranteed that if I have a receiver, the right TV and a player (DVD or BD) that my media will play.
the problem with Blu-ray is the DRM demands are outrageous for personal computers. That's part of why Vista is such a dog having to have large parts rewritten to prevent the owner of the computer from intercepting the Blu-ray movies while playing. Microsoft never directly pays for media codex anyway and Blu-ray is per copy licensing. Microsoft wanted HD-DVD to win because they were the ones getting paid so they got to add it to Vista and Xbox for "free".
Apple doesn't want to be told how to build computers..and the HDMI/Blu-Ray specs demand they do whatever the license giver tells them to... it's 10x as demanding as iTunes on it's worst day.
I'm not convinced that's it. I think Apple doesn't want to bother implementing the equivalent of Vista's protected media path for HD content. In other words, OS-wide DRM. I'm all for that. As much as I like HD video I don't like DRM and I don't need more performance sapping overhead in my OS.
Im loving the tie-down question at the end. it is awesome, wouldnt you say?
I'm impressed its slot-loading and can accept the smaller 8cm discs, most slot-loading drives can't take the smaller discs.
I'm certainly interested in this, love how sleek and thin it is, but I hope it can burn DVD-RAM discs.
Yeah, I guess it wasn't really a "fancy" trick after the Wii did it. It probably helped lower the cost for the mechanism because every Wii has it.
I'm confused though. Is there software that supports watching Blu Ray movies? does Quicktime play them? does the DVD player? Otherwise its just a burner for projects?
Oh, wow! Something third party which actually looks really, really good.
It costs more than an iPod Touch to watch Blu-ray on my Mac? I'll just hang tight, if it's all the same to you...
Seriously, that's like 100 HD TV episodes off the iTunes store!
Or a brand new, 22" monitor!
Or
Honestly, I've only seen like twenty Blu-ray movies in stores, and regular DVD quality has been more than good enough for ripping to my iPod in the past. Maybe when Apple ups the iPhone/iPod Touch screen resolution it'll be worth it, but until then, I'm perfectly happy with getting my HD off of iTunes.
What stores do you shop at? I haven't seen a store with a collection of less than 100 titles since February. And its true, there would be absolutely no benefit to ripping the movies to your iPod, unless the resolution was upped and you held it rather close to your eyes... but this is good news for anyone with a blu-ray collection who wants to take their movies on a plane trip, or use their Mac mini as an HTPC
1. Best Buy and Target
2. I agree on both points, but I have a MacBook and carrying it around wouldn't be worth the hassle for me, as I travel a lot, and don't have a 'permanent' residence per say (with a Mac Mini would probably be great for stationary users).
3. I hope the next iPods have some crazy resolution, like 640x960. If they doubled the resolution like that on the iPod Touch/iPhone, you would need a magnifying glass to see the pixels (and a Blu-ray drive ;-))!!!
Right. Because the human eye can discern between 1080p and 480 on an iPod sized screen...
@ Lowest ranked
You're saying you can't see the pixels on the iPod Touch/iPhone screen? It bugs the heck out of me when I'm playing a 3D game and I can't see the facial features from a distance... No, but really, you're saying you DON'T think it's a good idea for the iPod Touch/iPhone to get a better resolution?
Better resolution? Sure!
But HD on a 2" screen IS undiscernable by the unaided human eye, as you stated, you'd need a magnifying glass even if they were able to make the screen with 1,920 pixel columns with 1,080 pixel rows.
A season of Weeds on Blu-Ray = $23.95, same season on iTunes = $29.85.
I strongly prefer the Blu-Ray option.
@required
My point was that it would cost too much to buy the thing that let you watch Blu-ray (this $289 product that we are discussing, in case you forgot which article you are replying to) on a Mac. I was referring to this product, not making any comparison between the price of Blu-ray discs vs. online media!
Anyway, my theory is: wait until Blu-ray is built-in to Apple's computers, then use Blu-ray to its fullest potential! Blu-ray FT(future)W!!! ;)
There would be no point converting blu-ray to ipod/iphone format for the fact that the resolution of the screen would not fit the content. Which is probably why you are finding a lot of blu-ray discs as of late coming with SD digital copies that can be downloaded to your portable media at a more fitting resolution.
Also, to those that shun physical media. Hope you're running some kind of raid 1 array with your terrabytes of data. Mean time between failure's a bitch! At least if my Blu-Ray player breaks, I haven't actually lost my media. Hell if it breaks within warranty, I get a new player and everything's fine. I've yet to see a hard drive manufacturer guarantee anything other than the hardware.
@who
864 x 480 pixel for 3 inch class mobile phone LCD are very common nowadays.
Not a crazy and resolution at all. its just apple keep on its ignorance to the rest of the world.
--------
Its really doesnt make sense for a company who announced the "Year of HD" do not have a solution to authorizing HD contents on a piece of disc. A bag of hurt? what a joke.
@yui
I typed 640x960. I find it interesting that none of the replies actually read my post.
That's pretty damn cheap for a BURNER. But wow is it ever slow.
Umm i thought the "bag of hurt" was over licensing of software for playback...
Looks good, but how are we going to play Blu-Ray movies using this?
At least it would make a good (/expensive) way for making backup disks (if Disk Utility supports BR drives)
Trying connecting the USB connector to a Mac, then insert a blu-ray disc, then hit play. Viola it plays.
OS X doesn't support Blu-ray playback.
Then I guess Macs really suck.
Toast has Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD, oh well) extensions for Mac OS. Yes, it's extra, but it's there. Remember, the first version of Mac OS X didn't support DVD playback until 10.1. It's fair enough that if Windows needs extra software (Win-DVD), then Mac can require extra (Toast 9).
Can a usb connection handle transferring HD content?
For most values of hi-def, yes.
USB high-speed bandwidth is 480 Mb/s, which would limit 720p to below 20 fps at 24bpp uncompressed (video only); for actual Blu-ray content (which is compressed), the maximum bandwidth used will be 54 Mb/s, which almost fits in full-speed (USB 1.x).
1x on Blu-Ray is 36 Mbit/s. USB 2.0 gets roughly ~250 Mbit/s. So USB supports up to about 6x.
Please stop beating a dead horse.
The speed of bulk transfers over USB 2.0 depends on the drivers. USB 2.0 allows 64mbit/s per 'endpoint' and most drivers I have seen don't support multiple endpoints, which is why the theoretical max of 480mbit/s is never reached. As somebody else said, in the real world with reasonable drivers the speed is about half of this maximum.
@Benson: USB 1.x 'full speed' is 12mbit/s. Not good enough for Blu ;-)
289 is better than 600$ like few months ago! Im totally gonna buy something like that for my pc when price get under 200$. How about disk price though..?
its mainly for back-up... all that crap I download and uncompressed projects all over my 500gb drives...
Um... theres been a shitload of Blu-Ray burners for ~$200 at newegg for quite awhile now. For your PC that is...
There is no Software player availible for mac that can handle playback of these disks. Quicktime won't, DVD player won't. And there is no 3rd party application that will either.
The ONLY way to play them would be using bootcamp with windows.
And you can't back them up either, because the only thing that will strip the copy protection is AnyDVDHD (for windows only).
Sooo, bassically totally useless until the software is there. Only thing you can do is make large data disks.
I'd expect DumpHD+mplayer would work, subject to the same hassles as on Linux?
I wouldn't know... "I'm a PC, and I run slackware!"
I'd just as soon have an external unit for a little used feature like this. Maybe in 2-3 years I'd be more involved with Bluray but right now 99.9% of everything I'd do will be on CD/DVD and an internal unit just doesn't interest me. Heck I can remember the first $2k CDRom drives! I guess I'm just getting old.
Getting old? Dude, if you can remember CD-Rom drives for 2K, then you have been old for over a decade now...
Apple is wise in leaving out BRD
This product is a big bag of hurt!
Riddle me this;
What is the point of watching a Hi definition movie on a 15" laptop screen?... better left for the home entertainment system or that new 24 " LED display...
Correct me if im wrong but can you not connect this 24inch LCD display to the laptop? Also if you regard comment in brackets as optional reading let me take them out:
"and anyone with a fresh USB-equipped Mac, really"
Are you really that dim?
What's the resolution on your laptop screen? Standard DVD? Blu-ray?
Nuff said.
Riddle me this... What do I do if I want to back up my 250 GB hard disk on a vibration proof medium? Somehow, I'd rather use 5 BRDs than 30 DVDs...
Hmm... You're right, that's brilliant. If I buy the BR version of a movie to watch at home, and then I want to watch it on an airplane, I should definitely go buy the same movie again on DVD.
(Ok, in that case I should just torrent a DivX "backup copy" since I legally own it anyway... but it'd be even better if I could also use the physical media I purchased without all that hassle.)
I know a few women who would pay extra for a vibrating medium. But, that doesn't really say much about my sexual performance. Or the imaginary women I know.
Why not ask why other laptop manufacturers include HDMI outputs on their laptops?
"Amex Digital has stepped in to give prospective MacBook / MacBook Pro owners (and anyone with a fresh USB-equipped Mac, really)"
How about just anyone with USB?
Oh wait, hold up.
That drive's too pretty for me. *rolls eyes*
Yeah why the fuck did they even bother mentioning apple at all, this is just plain old regular USB which works on every OS out there. Then again, this IS applemodo after all...
will this ever hit the market? i'm still waiting to buy their portable super multi drive...
http://www.amexdigital.com/Press_Release-E_Portable%20Super%20Multi%20Drive.htm
I wonder if you crack open that external case and swap the guts with the super drive in the macbook.
I really think DVD and CD will in 5 years be a thing of the past. You have USB sticks now that hold just as much as what a Blu ray disc can hold and you can drag and drop onto that as much as you want. Downloading movies will only grow and HD movies in the 1080p space will come in time once internet speed and compression tech grow.
I currently download some 720p h.264 movies and watch them on my 1080p screen. Yes they look great but im not going and spending more money on a dvd drive that will be out of date in 2 years. Hence why no one is buying Blue ray players like they did with DVD.
Net connected HDTV will only grow with storage media and so hence as I started DVD and Blue are dead in 5 years.
Didn't the head of Samsung say the same thing?
They make 50GB USB memory sticks?
@tom
yes they do
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/29/buslinks-64gb-usb-2-0-flash-drive-pro-2-series/
The problem is internet provider infrastructure. Imagine for a moment if we were to make the move to downloadable hi-def movies. It's Friday/Saturday/whatever day your family sits down to watch movies...and everyone is downloading the newest release to stream to their TV/PC. Holy, net congestion Batman! How much do I really enjoy streaming movies buffering while I'm trying to watch them.
Now here's something else to throw into the mix. Comcast just instituted a 250GB monthly bandwidth cap as of October 1st. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080828-its-official-comcast-starts-250gb-bandwidth-caps-october-1.html
Now I realize that's a lot of bandwidth, but the smallest blu-ray discs are 25 GB so that's 10 movies...or...less than 10 movies plus whatever else you might like do download in a month.
Also, I bet if Comcast is successful with this bandwidth limit garbage, much like the airline industry, it won't be long till other internet providers are doing the same thing. At which point you can kiss mainstream downloadable HD goodbye.
$5000 for 64 GB flash drive vs. $40 for two re-writable Blu-Ray discs?
That flash drive is looking REAL feasible right now...
I've bought Bluray movies and I own a Bluray player but with each passing day and with articles like this and the comments that are posted it's becoming more and more clear to me that Bluray didn't really "win" anything....
Bluray may become a niche if it's lucky. But I really don't see it gaining DVD like status and that depresses me on level since I've invested some money in the format.
On the other hand though it's absolutely hilarious since this is sony's lil project and will mean FAIL for them.
Oh well we'll see what happens this fall. I got a job at BB as a part time associate (full time student here) and apparently we're supposed to push Bluray a lot this upcoming season.
We'll see how that goes.
Wait for the price to drop to $50-ish per player.
people are complaining about playback software on Mac, or why would I spend 40-50 bucks for a movie, but they miss the point that this is a burner!!! readers can be bought for much much less.
i would love to have a blue ray burner, I have had a HD video camera for 2 years, and it is impossible to save a decent length movie to a disk in HD (Toast can save to a DVD which will play in a blu-ray player, but gives like 10mins of video).
A bag of hurt!!! Ha!!!!
He is just pissed that he would have to pay royalties and licensing fees. Sorry Steve, but check the Apple discussion forums once in a while, people have been screaming for a blu-ray burner for a long time.
So what if it is expensive, at least make it an option! Professional movie makers want to use it for their clients too!!!
Signs point to "Yes".
I don't think it's so much about price but about the size and how blu-ray would work in the space they have. I believe there is no slot loaded blu-ray at 9.5mm (MBP Super Drive 15") but there are at 12.7mm (MBP Super Drive 17"). Also the blu-ray that is at 9.5mm is try loaded which I don't think would fly with Apples look and feel.
It's unfortunate that apple in no longer an 'Innovator' - doing things first - they have turned into a follower (Doing things that are already common, better)
Right, because, y'know, everyone else is making aluminum unibody laptop cases out of solid bricks of aluminum with glass screens. Real step on the metaphorical beaten path there.
http://www.instantrimshot.com/
I think i will replace my new macbook pros super drive to this one!
I hope Steve reads this in his bedroom.
Do I need to use my Black Card to buy this too?
Um... having the laser is nice and all, but don't you need software (that doesn't quite exist for the mac) to play a Blu-Ray Disc?
Any chance of this actually coming to market?
It does look nice, but it isn't $290 for the burner. $290 for the player, $390 for the burner. Still not bad, but the article is a little misleading.
96 comments, and yours is the only one to state this.. I was about to lose all faith in internet-humanity for someone not to call the editors error.