MCE Launches 8x Blu-ray drive for Mac

MCE Technologies has announced that it has begun shipping its 8X Blu-ray Recordable Drive for Mac. The drive is aimed at users of a Mac Pro / Power Mac who must install the drive internally. MCE's 8x Blu-ray drive for Mac can burn Blu-ray discs at up to 8x speed, DVD+-R media at up to 16X and CD-R media at up to 48x. The device costs $429.

“Blu-ray Disc (BD) technology, with its ability to record to 25GB single-layer and 50GB dual-layer discs, is the next generation in optical disc storage and MCE Technologies has brought it to the Mac. The MCE Technologies 8X Blu-ray Internal Recordable Drive for Apple Mac Pro and Power Mac is the fastest and most versatile Blu-ray drive we have ever shipped,” says MCE.

While the MCE Blu-ray drive for Mac is natively compatible with Mac OS X versions 10.5.2 and on, being able to record directly from the Finder without needing additional software, users can only create Blu-ray movie discs by using separate software such as Adobe Premier Pro, Final Cut Pro and Toast 10 Pro. Also, since Apple hasn't yet included support for Blu-ray playback in OS X, users are left with the option of running Windows in Boot Camp, MCE says, to play Blu-ray discs. Virtualization software like Parallels or VMware Fusion is not mentioned.

“As of now, playback of Blu-ray movies is not yet available under Mac OS X.” MCE is said to inform. “There is simply no software yet that will do that,” the company says. Fortunately, “this situation will likely change very quickly,” MCE believes. “You can, however, with the software provided, playback commercial Blu-ray movies on your Mac Pro with Apple's Boot Camp running Windows XP or Vista,” MCE explains. “You will need to make sure to download the latest graphics drivers from either Nvidia or ATI, depending on your graphics card, in order to ensure smooth playback of high definition Blu-ray movies as you've never seen them before on your Mac.”

According to MCE, the drive has a 4MB buffer for writing Blu-ray Disc and DVD media and has built-in Buffer Underrun protection. The drive includes a 25GB Blu-ray BD-RE rewritable disc for instant storage starting at $499. You can order yours bundled with Toast 10 Titanium + Toast BD/HD Plug-in for $599, or get the full professional Blu-ray production package and bundle it with Adobe Premier Pro CS4 for $1,295.00, MCE suggests.

Visit MCE here for more information on the now available 8x Blu-ray drive for Mac.