On Sep 25, 2010, at 8:24 PM, Steven wrote:
I'm considering getting a Blu-Ray drive when I finally get fed up
with my SuperDrive and can afford to do something about it. The
cheapest route would of course be an external DVD drive, but when I
took my PowerBook G4 in for some repairs they said that they charge
a standard price for repairs regardless of parts, something like
$250-300 (which was a big plus at the time since I needed to replace
a logic board that can cost $500+ from third parties), and I have
seen some BD-ROM/DVD-RW/CD-RW drives compatible with Mac for around
that price. If I were going to pay that much anyways I would want
increased functionality, and, being the cinephile I am, eventually I
will need to start upgrading my collection of post-2000 DVDs to Blu-
Ray (all films made before 2000 I only buy and watch on LaserDisc)
and since I don't have an HDTV and don't plan on buying one in the
near future the Mac would be the only way to watch HD. My reasoning
is that although I don't have any problem with the video quality of
DVD and I don't even have a TV that could make use of the increased
definition, eventually Blu-Ray will eclipse DVD just like DVD
eclipsed VHS, and it would be more cost effective to switch sooner
and start buying movies on Blu-Ray so I have fewer DVDs to replace
later on. But I'm not planning on doing that very soon, and for
people who don't have a large number of videos and don't care about
HD that solution wouldn't make much sense.
Good idea. DVDs have noticeably chunky pixels on a 24-inch screen,
which is just large enough (1920x1200) for Blu-ray's 1080p[1]. And
external is a good idea so I can use it on any machine -- such as a
new iMac, were I to buy one.
The only problem is the iMac is running Tiger, for which VLC (at
least) has dropped support. Perhaps it's time to install a newer OS X.
[2]
And yeah, I have no interest in buying a TV.
Josh
[1] Assuming a 16:9 aspect ratio, this means a width of 1920 pixels.
[2] I hesitate to say 'upgrade', since I consider differently code-
named OS X versions to be separate and incompatible products. Hence
'newer'.
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