Blu-ray Super Multi Drive for Mac

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 AMEX has brought it to the Mac. The Blu-ray Super Multi Drive for Apple new generation PowerBook Pro, PowerBook, Mac Pro and Power Mac, it comes to you completely pre-configured for easy user installation. In addition to writing to 25GB single-layer at up to 2X speed and to 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray discs at up to 2X speed, the Blu-ray Super Multi Drive is compatible with all DVD and CD recordable media including DVDˇÓR/RW + Dual/Double Layer, DVD-RAM, and CD-R and CD-RW.

What's the Blu-ray Disc?

Store up to 12,500 music tracks, 50,000 photos, or 4 hours of HD video on a single 50 GB Blu-ray Disc. Blu-ray Super Multi Drive for the new generation PowerBook Pro, PowerBook, Mac Pro and Power Mac incorporates a state-of-the-art blue-violet laser and ushers in the next generation of optical disc storage. The drive also writes to all DVDˇÓR/RW + DL (Double/Dual Layer) media, DVD-RAM, and CD-R/RW media and is compatible with all Apple's iApps.

High Quality Surround Sound

The BD-Video disc optionally supports next-generation surround sound formats like Dolby Digital Plus. Connecting a BD-Video player to an AV center using an HDMI* cable enables linear PCM multi-channel data transfer. This makes it possible to reproduce high-quality 7.1-channel surround sound with each channel offering DVD-Audio quality, delivering a surround sound experience that rivals the quality of the master audio source.
* HDMI Ver. 1.1 and newer.

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The High Storage Capacity

The BD-Video disc boasts a data storage capacity of 25GB* in a single layer and 50GB* in dual layer, because it uses the shorter wavelength blue-violet laser and a high-density objective lens to enable higher-density data reading. When a multi-layer system is adopted in the future, the storage capacity can increase to 100 GB* and even 200 GB*. One BD-Video disc can store a huge amount of data so users can enjoy many hours of high-definition content and high-quality surround sound that could not previously be provided by other media.
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*1GB=1 Billion bytes. Useable capacity will be less.

Structure of the BD-Video Disc
The Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc with the same dimensions as the DVD disc: 12 cm in diameter and 1.2 mm in thickness. By using a combination of the 405-nm-wavelength blue-violet laser, which is a shorter wavelength than the red laser used by DVD, and a high-density objective lens with a numerical aperture of 0.85, BD uses a laser beam spot that is only about 1/5 the size used by DVD. Thanks to these technologies, a single-layer BD-Video disc can store five times more data than a DVD disc.
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The new Blu-ray discs can store 25GB data on single layer discs and 50GB data on dual layer discs. Thatˇ¦s the equivalent of 23 hours of standard definition TV content or 6 hours of HD programming.

The figure to the right shows the difference in spot size between a Blu-ray laser and standard DVD recording laser. The smaller, tighter Blu-ray spot size means more spots (data) can be recorded to the disc resulting in data capacities of 25GB and 50GB per Blu-ray disc.

Toast 9 Titanium + HD/BD Plug-in for Mac OSX

The Blu-ray Super Multi Drive for Apple Mac OSX via the HD/BD Plug-in will allow you to create your own Blu-ray movies with custom menus playable on set-top Blu-ray players as well as Playstation 3 game consoles. Toast 9 Titanium manages all Blu-ray recording functions for the drive and incorporates a special feature called Toast Dynamic Writing. When used with a Blu-ray rewritable disc (BD-RE), Toast Dynamic Writing lets you use your Blu-ray Disc recorder like a giant hard disk drive ˇV drag and drop directly onto the disc icon to add or remove files. Blu-ray burning is here today. Toast 9 Titanium also includes comprehensive backup software which allows for manual, as well as scheduled backups to your Blu-ray Super Multi Drive. It will even automatically manage disc spanning should all your data not fit on one disc.

Author Professional Blu-ray Movies

As high definition (HD) has become the new standard for video, and Blu-ray Disc has won the high-definition format war for storing HD content, it's more important than ever to be able to author professional-quality Blu-ray discs. You can do so with the Blu-ray Super Multi Drive and Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. Adobe Encore CS3 software is the key. Included with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, Adobe Encore CS3 software makes output to a wide range of industry-standard media formats, including Blu-ray Disc, easy and efficient. Use the same Encore interface and features to author and deliver commercial-quality titles on both standard-definition DVD and high-definition Blu-ray Disc. Or author a high-definition Blu-ray Disc project and, with one click, create a finished standard-definition DVD project. Encore CS3 enhances your workflow by outputting to Blu-ray discs, even if you're editing with Apple's Final Cut Studio or Avid's professional editing tools.
The optional Toast 9 Titanium with HD/BD Plug-in software also allows you to create Blu-ray movies and even has basic menu customization features. Blu-ray movies created using either software are playable on standard Blu-ray set top boxes or Playstation 3 game consoles.

Blu-ray and HD DVD Movie Playback on your Mac

OK. Playback of Blu-ray and HD DVD movies is not yet native under Mac OS X. There is simply no software yet that will do that. This situation will likely change very quickly. You can, however, with the software provided, playback commercial Blu-ray and HD DVD movies on your Mac Pro with Apple's Boot Camp running Windows XP or Vista. 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, silky playback of high definition Blu-ray or HD DVD movies as you've never seen them before on your Mac.

Native Mac OS Compatibility

With the Blu-ray Super Multi Drive for new generation PowerBook Pro, PowerBook, Mac Pro and Power Mac, you can burn data instantly to 25GB and 50GB recordable and rewritable Blu-ray Discs directly from your Mac desktop in Mac OS 10.5.2 or later. Simply insert a blank Blu-ray Disc into the drive and its icon will mount to your Mac desktop. Then you can drag files, documents, spreadsheets, photos, songs, and movies to your heart's content onto the Blu-ray Disc icon. Then just click burn and in a few moments you will have archived your files onto the Blu-ray Disc for safekeeping. If you are using a rewritable Blu-ray Disc and would like to write to it again, simply load the Blu-ray disc into the drive and once it mounts to your desktop run Apple's own "Disk Utility" application located in your Utilities folder. Select the Blu-ray disc and then click on "Erase" and in a few moments you will have a blank Blu-ray disc ready to be written to all over again.

Enjoy your Blu-ray Digital Life...