Bluray through Boot Camp

I want to sell my PS3. But I already have an established Blu-ray collection (20+ titles) and I am actually very fond of blu-ray. I was looking for a way to hook up an internal blu-ray drive from newegg.com in an exclosure to connect to my Macbook and play Blu-rays. Then I found out Mac OS X doesn't support the Blue. So I figured I could set up Boot Camp and a program that can run Blu-ray. So if I buy an internal Blu-ray drive, a usb 2.0 external enclosure, run Boot Camp on my Macbook, get the program I need to run Blu-rays, and I get a DVI-Mini DVI cable and a DVI-HDMI cable to run to my 32" LCD HDTV (Westinghouse 32w6) I could play Blu-rays.

Is this recommended? Is Boot Camp a pain in this? Is this feasible? Is there a better way? How good will the performance be?

 

Once you install windows through boot camp, it becomes a windows pc (while in windows of course.). If it works in windows, it'll work. As for performance, I have no idea. If it performs well on a normal windows pc, then there would be no difference.

 

Arquis is exactly right. Your external Blue Ray disc drive would preform the exact same way as if it were hooked up to any Windows PC. I imagine that this performance would be quite good in fact as well.

One thing you may consider is getting a firewire (400 or 800 depending on your Macbooks connectivity) external drive to make sure that you are allowing the Blu-Ray drive and the computer to communicate as fast as possible in order to achieve the best picture.

 

keep your PS3, and keep the 2 seperate.

 

The graphics card and cable may be issues.

 

LOL... that won't affect picture quality! USB will easily be able to handle the HD video playback speeds. However, you may get better performance with Firewire when using Blu-Ray discs for data rather than for movies. Although even that may not matter, depending on how fast the drive is able to read the disc.

 

Transfer rate has nothing to do with image quality. The data is read off the disc then transferred to the software. The software then splits the audio and video. In Windows with a dedicated GPU, the raw bitstream gets passed on to the GPU so it can do all of the work for the video. The audio gets decoded either by hardware if it supports it or by software. In the case of a MacBook Pro (and nearly all laptops) it will be decoded by software. Or it will get passed via a digital audio output to a surround sound receiver.

With a good USB 2.0 controller in the external enclosure, and a good chipset on the computer, the real world speed difference between USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 is nill.

To the OP:

You might have problems with HDCP certification. PC players are strict with that, so if you don't have full HDCP on from the DVI output to the HDMI input of your TV, it won't work.

According to this post: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=5253314&postcount=9 The MacBook Pro does NOT support HDCP. So you cannot legitimately and "legally" watch blu-ray discs in Windows.

Some reviews say HDCP support is in the MacBook Pro, but it seems the answer from Apple is that the MBP does NOT support HDCP.

Other posters at other forums (doing some googling) also say the same thing. No HDCP support at all in the MacBook Pro.

Sorry. The only way you can get blu-ray discs to work is to use software of questionable legality.

 

I second this recommendation.

 

That to me is on my list of Cons with the MBP. Why has blu-ray never been incorporated. RO better yet any type of HD GPU rendering in the MBP. I haev to admit Window$ has a significant one up on Macs.

Hopefully they get this fixed when ever they release a new MBP. Also do you think the new OS will have that built in.

 

Until recently I don't think there was any drives that would fit the MacBook Pro.

 

I was about to say this, agreed. Get Firewire, NOT USB.

 

Again, Firewire will offer no real world advantage if good equipment is bought.

Plus all but a few blu-ray drives are SATA anyway. A good external enclosure with an eSATA connection would be better.

Oh wait, no Apple notebook has eSATA and the MacBook Pro's ExpressCard34 slot will not support many (if any at all) eSATA adapters for ExpressCard.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106259 Thats a better option anyway.

Its too bad the MacBook Pro doesn't support HDCP anyway, so playing blu-ray movies legitimately is completely out of the question.