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FastMac Announces 4x Blu-ray Burner for Pro Macs

by , 3:25 PM EST, December 14th, 2007

FastMac announced the immediate availability of its 4x dual layer Blu-ray drive burner for Apple Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The drive can write 50 GB of data to a disc at speeds of more than 1 GB/minute.

The new 5.25-inch, tray loading drive uses one of the fastest Mac-compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 GB of storage on a dual or double layer disc, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD and CD recordable media. Using a SATA connection, the drive’s 4x BD-R DL mechanism allows professional Mac users to burn up to 50GB of data on 1 disc in less than 50 minutes.


The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 12x speed in single layer and 8x speed in dual/double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD+RW media at 8x speeds and DVD-RW media at 6x speeds. The drive also supports CD-R reading and writing at up to 40x speeds and CD-RW burning at up to 24x speeds.

The 4x Blu-ray optical drive upgrade requires Mac OS X 10.4.8. It is compatible with the Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The PMG5 will require SATA to IDE/ATAPI converter cable. Native support for Finder burning is not yet available and requires third party software such as Adobe Premiere CS3 or Roxio’s Toast 8 Titanium.

The tray loading 4x Blu-ray drive is priced at a special introductory US$579.95. Each drive carries a 1-year warranty and a 30-day money back guarantee.

Observer Comments

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Close Name:Guest
Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:18 pm Subject: Can it play Blu-Ray movies?

The article omits a critical feature - can it play Blu-Ray movies, or not?


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Close Name:MacHack Posts: 6 Joined: 07 May 2004
Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:19 pm Subject: Re: Can it play Blu-Ray movies?

Quote
Guest wrote:
The article omits a critical feature - can it play Blu-Ray movies, or not?


That is the question! I almost purchased its predecessor before I learned that it couldn't play blue-ray movies.

I'm not going to spend a dime on that drive until they add the ability to also play HD movies on my Mac.


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Close Name:Guest
Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:33 pm Subject: Movie playback

I don't think it's a limitation of the drive so much as OS X. Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) movies have very aggressive DRM schemes, and they don't allow HD-quality playback through "non-protected" channels. OS X has no mechanism to protect audio and video streams. I'm not sure it would even be possible with current hardware. (Do current Mac video cards support HDCP?)

That said, I assume some intrepid programmer not subject to any Blu-ray licensing agreements will release a player at some point. I think some already exist for Linux.


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Close Name:Guest
Sat Dec 15, 2007 7:23 am Subject: There's cheaper better branded models elsewhere.

Several weeks ago there were a couple name brand models in the traids starting at $275.


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Close Name:gslusher Posts: 2088 Joined: 13 Nov 2002
Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:03 pm Subject: Re: There's cheaper better branded models elsewhere.

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
Several weeks ago there were a couple name brand models in the traids starting at $275.

Which "traids" and which drives?


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Close Name:studentx Posts: 38 Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Sat Dec 15, 2007 6:11 pm Subject: does not work right

you can no longer use BD-RE (rewritable like dvd-ram) with toast if you're using leopard. why burn coasters using BD-R when you could have used BD-RE instead? they cost almost the same. Adaptec needs to get on it and fix this feature in toast.


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