macnn/electronista
10/16/2008, 1:50pm, EDT
Thursday, October 16thAMEX intros slim Blu-ray burner for Macs, PCs
Hong Kong-based AMEX Digital on Thursday announced the release of a slim Blu-ray drive for Mac computers. The Portable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive is styled like the MacBook Air's Superdrive and allows users to read and write Blu-ray discs, including BD-R and BD-RE formats in both full 12cm and mini 8cm sizes. Dual-layer Blu-ray media is also supported, allowing users to copy up to 50GB of data at once. Power and interfacing with the computer comes via the drive's USB port.
AMEX' Quiet Drive Technology reduces the noise level of the drive, while a liquid crystal tilt/blur compensator compensates for warped discs for a more reliable writing process.
The drive can burn Blu-ray discs at 2x speeds, while DVD+/-Rs are created at up to 8x speeds. CD-Rs are written at 24x speeds and CD-RWs at 16x. Mac OS X and Windows XP upwards are supported. Movie playback and authoring on Blu-ray aren't currently an option on Macs due to the need for software support.
Now available in either black or white, the Portable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive is priced at $289.
Filed under: computers, upgrades/storage
Other story tags: blu-ray
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$289 !!
wow! I guess that's why they're not in the new MacBooks yet.
Software??/
OK, so now we have the hardware.
What software is needed to run this?
Do they supply it?
Is it built into your Apple computer?
Which Apple computers can run this?
External...
This is an external USB drive, not internal.http://www.amexdigital.com/ Click on the products link at the bottom. The link for the drive is the first one.
Pricing weirdness
At http://www.amexdigital.com/PressRelease-EPortable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive.htm
It says the player is $289, but the recorder is $389? A little confusing.
The latest version of Toast or Adobe Encore should work, in theory.