disc burning
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Plextor PL-LB950UE Blu-ray burner lands in the US with heady mix of USB 3.0 speed and double-layer storage
Europeans have been able to bag this speedy external writer for a few months now, but it's only just received its Green Card -- turning up in the US with a suitcase full of dreams and a price tag of $239.99. A quick check of its CV resume reveals a choice of either USB 3.0 or eSATA connectivity, 12x write speed, and the ability to burn up to 50GB of data on a dual-layer disc. The drive is being pitched as an "all-in-one Blu-ray device" because it also handles 3D playback and has a low vibration system for quieter operation. Admittedly, it only offers half as much storage as BDXL writers, but those burn slower and onto judderingly expensive media. Closer competition comes from Buffalo, which arrived early to the USB 3.0 table, but whose current MediaStation model omits the eSATA option.
Mac 101: How to check the speed of your CD/DVD burner
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice users. Every so often, stumbling around the Mac OS you find something clever and wish everyone knew it. As I was about to do a CD burn on my internal optical drive on my Mac Pro, I was wondering how fast that Apple stock drive was. Yes, I could have checked the specs on the Apple website, but while playing with System Profiler I found something interesting. (To get to System Profiler select the Apple logo at the top left of your screen, choose About This Mac, then click More Info. You can also find it in your Applications/Utilities folder.) If you select Disc Burning in the left hand column you'll get a list of your internal and external drives. If you put a disc in (new or already burned) the profiler will tell you what write speeds are supported after you 'refresh' the data from the profiler View Menu or just by doing a 'command-R'. Quite nifty. My Pioneer internal burns a CD at 32x and a DVD at 12x. Who knew? Try it, if you have a use for the info. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I'm hoping this tip will be useful to some of our readers.
Second generation Blu-ray ships for Mac
MCE Technologies announced today that they are shipping their second generation Blu-ray drives for Macintosh computers. These drives, which come in both external housings and internal models for Mac Pro desktops start at $399US. They are the fastest and most comprehensive Blu-ray drives available for the Mac so far. Last summer, MCE released their first generation of Blu-ray drives.The will burn at 8X for Blu-ray, 16X for DVD R/RW + DL, 40X for CD-r/RW, 5X for DVD-RAM and HD DVD-ROM. Some models support HP Lightscribe for burning labels onto appropriate disks. All the drives are natively compatible with OS X 10.5.2 or later, and can record directly from within the finder without any specialized software. Blu-ray movie discs and content can be created with Adobe Premier Pro, Roxio Toast 10 Pro, and Final Cut Pro.Since Steve Jobs was famously for Blu-ray before he was against it, Apple has not included any Blu-ray hardware in stock Macs, but the OS as mentioned supports burning data discs. Unfortunately, you can't view a Blu-ray movie on a Mac unless you are running Windows XP or Vista under Boot Camp.
Disco revealed
Lots of people emailed us about Disco, the new app from the folks behind AppZapper and MacZot and we didn't post about it. Why? Because there was very little information about the app, other than it was supposed to be super cool.This all changed recently, though, since some screenshots were posted to the Disco blog. Disco is a disc burning utility that tries to make burning discs easy and fun, and it is taking aim at Toast. Check out the screenshots for more info.
