Here’s me…bringing you the Monday morning ‘Blu’s!
The world’s fair. Not generally, but when it comes to technology, sure. Technology convergence has gotten us to that point where no company can, generally, say no to what the consumer wants… Apple may say that you won’t get Blu Ray drives with your Mac, but if you really need it, there’s ways to get it done… with a catch. Last week (or was it the week before that?), I introduced a Blu Ray combo from Samsung (there’s another this week for all of you who can’t have enough of these Blu Ray drives), but this one is for the Mac only.
From MCE Tech, for the Mac fan who needs a Blu Ray burning fix, we present the MCE 8X Blu-ray Disc External Recordable Drive. This external optical drive for the Mac desktop, connects to the computer through either USB or eSATA. Besides burning to Blu Ray, since it is a combo, it can burn to dual-layer DVDs and CD-ROMs. It burns the 25 GB BD-R discs and the dual-layer BD-R DL 50 Gb discs at speeds up to 8X, DVD(+/-)Rs and DVD dual-layer discs at 16X, CD-ROM and CD-RW discs at 48X, and even DVD-RAM discs at 5X.
Finder on OS X supports the data Blu Ray disc burning capability, though you may choose to buy the MCE external drive bundled with software that provides better support, such as Apple’s Final Cut Studio, Adobe’s Premiere Pro, or Roxio’s Toast. Minus the bundled software, you can get your hands on one of these starting from $279, and MCE Tech’s website offers a $100 rebate on the preferred Final Cut Studio bundle!
It offers a choice of connections between USB and eSATA. Paired with the USB connection, it is among the fastest Blu Ray burners in the market today. High-def Blu Ray discs can be burned for viewing on a home theatre or a Blu Ray player/HDTV, with the help of Apple’s Compressor software, which ships with the Final Cut Studio package, or using Roxio Toast Titanium’s High-Def/BluRay Disc plug-in. It goes without saying that there’s no support for playing Blu Ray video on your Mac yet, though, so that’s the catch I warned you about.
The drive’s a good all-round product; the company should be familiar to the Mac faithful. MCE Tech, since its inception in 1993, has been a supplier of Mac equipment and includes a lot of Mac-specific solutions, such as hard drives, optical drives, and portable accessories.
The MCE baby is compatible with both Intel Macs and the older PowerPC Macs, but you’ll need at least Mac OS 10.4.x or better to support the drive. The Blu Ray burning software, in particular, will need at least Mac OS 10.4.8 and QuickTime 7.1.3 installed.
The drive has a 4MB data buffer, ships with a USB cable and a blank, 25GB BD-RE (Blu Ray Rewritable ) disc for you to test. It has rugged metallic exterior, topped off with grayish plastic at the back and on the front bezel. It’s got a small fan that hums along nicely as it burns any disc you throw at it, reliably fast.
If you need a Mac Blu Ray burner that connects through USB and works well, MCE’s got it.
