Blu Ray for MAC Pro's
by Bob Zelin
on
May 23, 2008 at 10:20:03 pm
Hi -
just some reference info, for those of you that want to save some money.
I just installed the new MCETech Blu Ray DVD-R for the MAC Pro. MCETech doesn't make anything. It's off the shelf products that they package, and dramatically mark up. It requires no driver software (other than Roxio Toast, which you need anyway for a MAC Pro to do Blu Ray burning).
The actual drive is the (get ready, this is a mother of a model #) -
HL-DT-ST BD-RE HHW-H20
This is a SATA drive, which is incompatible with the MAC Pro that still uses a parallel ATA (IDE) interface. MCETech simply provides you with the Addonics ADSAIDE IDE to SATA bridge card, which is $19.99 on Amazon. Nothing is even scratched out, or relabeled to hide the original manufacturers of this stuff.
It looks like if you do this by yourself, you will also need a short parallel IDE cable to connect between the Addonics board and the short Apple internal cable that dangles off the back of the native CD. There are no installation instructions with the MCETech drive (neither are there any instructions on their website), so I failed when I first did the install, because I could not figure out how to make one drive the MASTER CD, and the other the SLAVE CD. After putting on my reading glasses, I saw that there was a jumper on the Apple (Sony) DVD-R, and I moved the jumper to SLAVE, and everything worked fine. After searching at home for the Addonics card, I saw that Addonics has detailed instructions on their site, on how to make their adaptor either the MASTER or the SLAVE device.
Considering that MCETech doesn't give you any installation instructions (even on their website), you might as well do it yourself anyway.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by walter biscardi on May 23, 2008 at 11:10:39 pm
FastMac's burner is plug and play. I highly recommend their units. I'm sure it's a repackaged device, but it has worked here and their tech support has been great. We just had an issue with ours and when we could not figure out what was wrong in one day, they replaced it overnight.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by Warren Eig on May 24, 2008 at 7:26:42 am
I put in a Panasonic SW-5583 ($419) it is the same mechanism that FastMac uses in their drive. They just rebrand it and charge $100 more for theirs. But I wouldn't buy any thing from that company as they are so rude.
But besides the point. This drive installs in 5 seconds using one of the two spare SATA ports on the Mac Pros.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by Bob Zelin on May 25, 2008 at 4:36:20 pm
this is a better answer for Scott, because I went thru the same thing. you get a computer, you simply want to plug in a BluRay drive. So you order one - and it doesnt' fit. Your initial reaction is "oh my God, what do I do now !".
This is what happened to me in March. I ordered a MAC Pro, and the Pioneer BluRay Burner - BDR202. I searched google before I did it, without enough knowlege. I received the equipment, and tried to install the BDR202, and it would not adapt - because the "new" Pioneer BDR202 has a SATA interface, and the new MAC Pro's all have the old PATA interface in the drive slots. When you don't have any cables, adaptors, or knowlege (as I did in March 2008), all you do is say "S%$#, this doesn't work". When I called Pioneer in March 2008, the product manager said that they were not supporting Apple, and that my only hope was to find an "old" BDR-101, which had the PATA IDE interface.
The point of my post, is that you can use ANY BluRay drive, if you have an adaptor (like the Addonics). When you see these products (like MCETech) - all they are doing is providing you with a cheap, off the shelf Blu Ray DVD-R, with the correct adaptor (which turns out to be $19.99 retail).
As far as the "I will use an external blu ray burner" - this is the SAME STORY. Back in March 2008, I did the same thing - I got a Lacie Blu Ray burner - which turned out to be the Matsuda Blu Ray (Panasonic) in a Lacie metal box with a SATA to Firewire interface board. This is how they make an "external" Blu Ray burner.
Again, the point of this post (and many of my posts), is that you don't have to spend $800 to get a $200 product to work.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by Scott Thomas on May 26, 2008 at 12:59:13 am
Thank you all for your insight!
The G5 has only the single optical bay, and it seems that there are more and more SATA interface drives and fewer and fewer PATA ones. I would rather leave a PCIe slot open for my future video card purchase (Thinking Decklink HD Extreme) rather than have it taken up with a card just to get an extra SATA port.
I also don't want to remove the Apple drive from the system. I've done that with other systems I've had and it sometimes causes MacOSX to not want to burn disks. Perhaps MacOS isn't as petulant about not seeing an Apple drive as it once was?
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by Sean ONeil on May 26, 2008 at 9:11:05 am
[Scott Thomas]"The G5 has only the single optical bay, and it seems that there are more and more SATA interface drives and fewer and fewer PATA ones. I would rather leave a PCIe slot open for my future video card purchase (Thinking Decklink HD Extreme) rather than have it taken up with a card just to get an extra SATA port.
"
[Scott Thomas]"I also don't want to remove the Apple drive from the system. I've done that with other systems I've had and it sometimes causes MacOSX to not want to burn disks. Perhaps MacOS isn't as petulant about not seeing an Apple drive as it once was?"
Whatever problem you had must have been something wrong with the drive you replaced it with. The lack of an "Apple" branded optical drive is not normally going to cause any such problems.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by David Roth Weiss on May 26, 2008 at 9:25:04 am
[Scott Thomas]"Perhaps MacOS isn't as petulant about not seeing an Apple drive as it once was?"
Scott wins this weeks vocabulary award for best use of the word "petulant." Come to think of it, I think its the first time it ever been used on a Cow forum.
Nope, I was mistaken. There are actually five uses of the word since March 2006. Amazingly, some of those using it are actually straight males too.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by Bob Zelin on May 26, 2008 at 3:06:16 pm
Scott writes -
I also don't want to remove the Apple drive from the system. I've done that with other systems I've had and it sometimes causes MacOSX to not want to burn disks
REPLY - Scott has been very nice, and does not deserve a "beating", but this is the kind of comment that makes me crazy. Scott, let me make one thing perfectly clear to you. You must stop being an "I buy and use Apple only" type of person. Apple DOES NOT MAKE the optical drive. It is NOT an APPLE optical drive. Simply go to About this MAC, and More Info, and you will see all the different brand products that Apple uses. Your optical DVD drive is probably made by SONY, not Apple ("but I don't want to use a Sony drive"). The memory RAM chips are probably by Samsung, the internal hard drive is by Seagate, Hitachi or Western Digital. When people say "hey, you might want to use "brand x"" - and you fear that it won't be an Apple original part, just remember, Apple doesn't make most of this stuff.
I was shocked to learn that the "hi end" Hewlett Packard standard CD and DVD drives are made by "world famous"
LIGHT-ON (who?) from Korea.
Re: Blu Ray for MAC Pro's by Scott Thomas on May 27, 2008 at 8:44:37 am
[Bob Zelin]"...but this is the kind of comment that makes me crazy. Scott, let me make one thing perfectly clear to you. You must stop being an "I buy and use Apple only" type of person."
I'm a do-it-yourselfer type. I've hacked with Apple, PC and even Amiga systems over the years. It's not that I'm afraid of putting a after-market drive in the G5, it's just that if I want to do my regular disk burning, I know the Apple drive works. I have a MDD G4 at work that I put a TDK drive into. The Mac OS (classic) didn't care for it, but Toast was OK. It had the two drive bays so it wasn't a big problem.
Apple only? The first "Mac" I bought was a Power Computing system. It never liked the PCI cards I put into it. My Miro DC30 was a problem until I bought a Blue and White G3.
