MCE Technologies has introduced its 6X Blu-ray Recordable Drive for Macs. It’s natively compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later and works inside the Mac Pro and Power Mac. It’s priced starting at $499.
While Macs can support Blu-ray Disc drives as data drives, the Mac doesn’t yet ship with a Blu-ray Disc drive option — “SuperDrives” capable of burning DVDs are still standard issue on Apple’s pro models. Blu-ray Disc is a High Definition (HD) optical drive standard that can store much more data per disc — up to 50GB on dual-layer BD-R media.
The drive can record data to Blu-ray, DVd and CD media directly from the Finder without needing additional software. If you want to burn Blu-ray movies, you’ll need Roxio’s Toast 9 Titanium and HD/BD Plug-in, which MCE bundles for an extra $100. MCE also provides software to enable Boot Camp-equipped Mac Pros also running Windows XP or later to play back Blu-ray and HD DVD movies (movie playback is not currently supported on the Mac).
At 6X, the drive can burn single-layer BD-R media at 27MB/sec. It burns dual-layer BD-R media at 4x (18MB/sec), and BD-RE discs at 2X (9MB/sec). It’s also capable of recording DVD±R media at up to 16X (22MB/sec), DVD±R DL at 4X, DVD+RW and 8X, DVD-RW at up to 6X, DVD-RAM at 5X, CD-R at up to 40X (6MB/sec) and CD-RW at up to 24X.
MCE also offers a bundle including Adobe Premier Pro CS3 with Encore for $1,295.