New DVD drive in my MBP?

[Karel Bata]

It's failed, and I've only had the MBP for 3 months! Hardly ever used the drive - less than 10 reads, and 2 writes.

So I wonder - is it worth asking for one that's a better make? Can't be much extra cost. I take it the current one doesn't read blu-ray?

Any suggestions? I see though that the Apple store offers no other drives, nor does Jigsaw24 - the folks I bought the MBP off.

Cheers! :emote_hippie:

 

[Andrew T Foster]

Hello,

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything available. OWC and MCE are usually two places for 3rd party internal drives but they offer nothing for the newer Unibody machines.

With only three months on the MBP you are definitely under warranty.

Best!

ATF

 

[ericyoung]

Get it fixed under warranty. It's not necessarily the drives that don't support Blu-Ray, it's Apple and OSX that doesn't - a very stupid deliberate policy!

 

[Karel Bata]

Cheers. Making the call right now.

 

[Stephen Gentle]

Get it fixed under warranty. It's not necessarily the drives that don't support Blu-Ray, it's Apple and OSX that doesn't - a very stupid deliberate policy!

Mac OS X certianly supports Blu-Ray, from a data standpoint at least. Also, Final Cut Pro can actually burn Blu-ray disks using third party drives.

I'm not sure if the DVD player application does play back blu-ray films but there are third party solutions for that.

 

[ericyoung]

Well yes, it does support third party drive burning, but as far as I know there aren't any third party programmes that will play back Blu-Ray films even on an external Blu-Ray drive, so it's by no means what I call natively "supported" - I'd love to be wrong though! What third party solutions are there to playing Blu-Ray on a Mac in OSX?

 

[Karel Bata]

Well VLC claims to play Blu-Ray - VLC Media Player
Any one got any blu-ray disks and a suitable drive and care to try it out?

And it's free! :emote_happyhappy: (been dying to use that graemlin)

Just as well my MBP's under warranty - on the Apple forum they say an apple replacement costs hundreds! You'd think there's room there for some enterprising third party to step in with blu-ray hardware. Do you suppose Mr. Jannard might fancy a new venture..?

EDIT

Ah, not quite so straightforward as it first appears (but hardly a real prob to geeks like us) tutorial here: How to play Blu-ray discs under OS X

 

[Nick Gallegos]

It's been my experience that the slot-loading optical drives in Apple laptops are pretty prone to failure. They can't really put a "better" drive in, either. Matsushita (Panasonic's parent) is the sole manufacturer of the slot loaders Apple uses.

I'm on my 4th Apple laptop and all them have had the drive replaced under warranty at some point.

Your only real options for Blu-ray drives on Apple laptops are externals.

 

[ericyoung]

Thanks for the tutorial link Karel, but that tutorial just illustrates how crap it is that OSX doesn't support Blu-Ray playback natively!

 

[Karel Bata]

Usual s**t eh? Apple crippled Quickdraw after QT 6.3 (so my Matrox card didn't work properly!). AVIs can't be played without a fix from Microsoft. They don't allow Flash on the iPhone or iPad. The list goes on.