“Lots of people want to watch Blu-ray movies on their Macs,” Chris H. blogs for OWC.
“Until now, though, doing so required ripping the movies to your hard drive and playing them that way,” Chris reports. “Mac Blu-ray Player from Macgo is a movie player that plays back Blu-ray movies from the original source discs.”
Chris reports, “First you need a Blu-ray drive. Fortunately, OWC just happens to sell some. 😉 Download & install the Mac Blu-ray Player application from Macgo.”
“After inserting a Blu-ray disc and launching the Mac Blu-ray Player application, you will be prompted to select your disc or a backed up .iso image. You must be connected to the Internet for the application to decrypt the disc for watching,” Chris reports. “After the application scans the disc, it begins playback.”
More info and links the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Anybody try this yet?
I looked I to this a few months back, all the reviews said it worked…. Shitty.
Some times it would play, and sometimes skipping or not at all.
Could have made some updates though.
I just keep my pc around for ripping blu ray.
Nah, can’t be arsed. Hardly ever play the DVDs I own, and I only use the rive on my Mac for ripping CDs into iTunes. Still, I’m sure there’s lots of folks will welcome this.
Have got this and it works well, to a point.
You need a fast Mac to use it. I had a 2.8GHz C2D with 3Gb ram and it couldn’t play the discs. After I got a new 2.8GHz i7 with 16Gb ram it plays fine. But it only plays the titles not the selection menus. Still worth it if you want to play Blu-rays but defiantly try before you buy.
Everyone is a thief and must be groped via internet before playing a movie.
Exactly.
Thank the MPAA for inspiring piracy via their blatant disrespect for customers.
Digital
Rights
Manglement
The blu-ray player by this company has gone through several revisions and is now stable and working quite well. I use it with my iMac 27″ and an LG 12x blu-ray burner.
Wow! I’m impressed! I just downloaded it and it’s working great.
Someone is making money on a software product that Steve Jobs doesn’t think that we need. Imagine!
It’s not accurate to say “Steve Jobs doesn’t think that we need” Blu-Ray playable via Mac OS X. He simply said it was a ‘bag of hurt’, which is a great way to describe the 3-layered DRM hell that would be required to be built into Mac OS X. Microsoft were happy to hobble Windows and their customers with Blu-Ray DRM crap. Apple was not. I like that!
Bite me Sony.
I have a multi-TB NAS for all my DVD rips and play them on my 27″ iMac via Front Row. Why should I want to fiddle with optical discs?
However I wonder if it’s possible to play back BluRay rips via Front Row. Any advice (without using WinCrap)?
Easy… Rip them as m4v (or whatever iTunes uses, I forget)
I rip all my DVD and bluray movies, all backup up so I can play them anywhere.
Right, but I prefer to have the “full monty” (read : including the menu and all bonus stuff). Would that be possible? Thx!
You could rip each part.. Which would be a pain.
I see your point.
I just rip the main movie, and use the DVD or blu ray for the extras.
I’m sure you can do it somehow… At least less painfully than each track.
Really, Apple? You give your operating system an update so major that it breaks thousands of software titles and yet it still doesn’t include the Blu-Ray playback capability PC users have had for years now? Based on the reports I’ve read, this Blu-Ray software is, at best, a buggy and poorly implemented third party attempt to circumvent Apples puzzling omission of this basic function. And please, let’s not trot out that “bag of hurt” quote again. That statement was correct at the time Steve made it, but the licensing issues he was referring to have long since been resolved. Apple’s continuing denial of Blu-Ray to it’s users reminds me of a little child sticking fingers in his ears and shouting “no no no” in a desperate attempt to shut out what he doesn’t want to hear. Sadly, this denial of Blu-Ray appears to be part of a general dumbing down of the Apple experience that includes the loss of Rosetta, the FCPX debacle, the elimination of save as, and the lack of documentation for iPhoto.
I agree, the “bag of hurt” seems to be Lion. This software (Bluray Player) was released and updated quickly. It makes me think they are off-shore. I don’t think my PS3 calls home each time it runs a bluray.Calling home is also a feature of other Bluray ripper software for mac.
This software isn’t a ripper app. Although I do wonder about the internet requirement, also.
My 3 year old Panasonic BD player doesn’t require an internet connection, although it has had an issue with a few discs that research on various CE forums has indicated won’t play properly without one. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Crank 2 are two titles widely reported to have this issue.
Every BD drive I’ve seen for sale has a warning on it that says it won’t play BD movie discs. The Blu-ray Disc Association requires that computer BD drives (capable of burning BD discs) don’t have the content protection circuitry that stand alone BD players have, in order to prevent ripping commercially produced BD discs.
My thought is that the producers of this app have an arrangement with the BDA to allow for some form of temporary authorization. From what I understand, the authorization process has to be done separately for each BD title and for each time it is played.
Steve doesn’t want you to play back BluRay discs because he wants you to but or rent them from the iTunes store.
While the quality of those movies may be ‘good enough’ for a lot of people, they are not ‘good enough’ for me, so I’d rather deal with the “bag of hurt” Apple has dropped on us by not implementing BluRay ability on Mac’s.
Agreed. Personally I’m skipping Blu-ray as I’m trying to break away from physical media, but Mac users should still have the choice.
I have this software. It has been updated regularly and is improving. It has a 3 month trial. It plays most of my BluRay titles but not all. I don’t like the way it requires an internet connection. Must be for the “bag of hurt.” Gone with the Wind and Spiderman 3 didn’t play. Everything else I tried worked very well. When I first downloaded this program it was a beta only they were marketing it. Maybe that is the reason for the 3 month trial. I haven’t bought it. Not sure if I will. I would recommend it.
Get a TV… use a phone to make phone calls… seriously, who really wants to sit for 2 hours in front of an iMac and watch a movie???
It is not up to you and me to determine that. Apparently, there are many people who do (perhaps college students in dorms?) and I have no intention to pass judgement.
That said, I think that the percentage of computer users who actually stick an optical disc (DVD or Bluray) into a drive and watch a movie on that computer is rather negligible. Much like the people who used ExpressCard, or analogue modem, or floppy disk. Apple will mercilessly eliminate features and technologies that don’t get enough use among their customer base. The threshold for elimination is rather high (possibly 97%), but it is definitely there.
I watch movies on my iMac…
At my desk I have my iMac, my pc, and my MBP..
I’ll watch a tv show/movie on my iMac while I’m working on something else.
Why haul all my crap to the front room to watch a movie on my 55″ tv, and figure out how to setup my work and my MBP etc JUST so I can watch the movie on an actual tv?
27″ iMac a foot from my face… Works just fine while I do paperwork etc.
I do have. 32″ tv in my office now, but sometimes it’s easier to just use the iMac.
And I also go outside and watch something on the deck with just my MBP or iPad… Can’t take the 55″ outside just for a movie.
Like the print media, the disc is dead !!!
Not quite. It continues to be the most popular medium to share home made video (with family, class parents, soccer team families, for wedding videos, etc).
The point is, vast majority of all these people use their TV (and DVD / Bluray player) to watch these discs; NOT their computer.
Apple needs to make Bluray authoring possible in iLife. Vast majority of the world doesn’t have sustained 6Mbps internet connection that is minimum for a (relatively crappy) HD stream on YouTube.
I only buy blu ray (borrow… 😉 )
So I can rip them. 99% of the time I watch any movie or tv show “on disk” it’s something I ripped and and watching through my apple tv or on my iMac or iPad.
And I always get the ones with the digital copy also, save me some time ripping.
I like the special features also, that why I don’t just buy the digital version. But I agree the disk is all but dead.
And for anyone who is interested… this software also works with installed Blu-Ray drives in MacPro’s. And it’s good at playing back .m2ts streams… better than VLC is… AND it’ll play back .iso files as well(although there may be some issues….)
I can see a bunch of uses for this… consider me sold!