In spite of a bunch of Blu-Ray drives (and even a couple of HD-DVD drives, supposedly) coming out for the Mac, Apple's DVD Pro Studio and Apple DVD Player programs appearantly implementing some bits and pieces of the HD-DVD spec, a number of wintel solutions for playing both formats for quite a while now, Apple's membership in one of the Blu-Ray standard authority, many Macs being used to author the discs in the first place, and even a recent end to the format war in the form of hybrid BRD/HD-DVD drives, I haven't seen any signs of Apple nor anyone else coming out with a Mac solution for playback of these formats.

What exactly is going on? Has Apple said anything?

Also, a bunch of related questions:
I haven’t tried the new versions of DVDSP. Are the “HD” discs playable in set-top HD-DVD players? Does Apple’s DVD Player program recognize HD-DVDs (even very simple ones authored on wintel boxes) using the routines intended to play back DVDSP HD projects?
Is any progress being made by open source entities like the VLC team on playing these things?
Has Roxio said anything about extending support to movie playback or authoring?
Exactly what format are the HD discs recorded by Toast 8 from El Gato HDTV tuners?
On OSx86 machines, does Windows play movies on Mac BRD/HD-DVD drives?
Have any Mac users tried a hybrid BRD/HD-DVD drive? Did it work?

Thanks for any information, I hope Apple’s getting its act together.



Eric,

The question is, has anyone tried to use an HD/BD drive with Leopard dev. preview? Clearly there are references to "HD" in the Leopard Apple DVD Player.

I doubt it will work, even if HD support is planned for Leopard, but whatever happens, it will not happen in Tiger -- you'll have to wait for Leopard.

Get a drive, toast 8 and burn it up as you wait for the 10.5.

The real trick will be watching :-)