FastMac announced on Friday that they are now shipping their tray-loading Blu-ray drive for desktop Macs. This drive is compatible with eMac, iMac G4, Mac Pro, and PowerMac G3, G4 and G5.
"The new 5.25-inch, tray loading drive uses one of the fastest & most compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 GB of storage on one disk, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD & CD recordable media. Fastmacis Blu-Ray optical drive has been tested and certified compatible with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 video production software," the announcement said.
Specifications: Fastmacis tray loading Blu-ray optical drive supports reading, writing and re-writing to single and dual layer Blu-ray media at 2x speeds. The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x speed in single layer and 4x speed in dual/ double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 6x speeds. The drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at up to 5x speeds and standard CD-R and CD-RW burning at up to 24x speeds.
The drives require Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later and require 3rd party software such as Roxio Toast, since Finder burning is not yet supported. Macs supported are: eMac, iMac G4, Mac Pro, and PowerMac G3, G4 and G5.
The drive is available immediately and is priced at US$499.95.