Playing HD discs

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Level 1

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Playing HD discs

When I purchased my Imac, I was told that I could play HD discs (Perfect Storm, The Searchers, etc.). It turns out this was incorrect information as it took 6 customer service reps to finally give me the answer I already knew when the dvd drive spit out the HD disc without playing it. Is there a way to play HD discs on my IMAC? IT seems ridiculous to me that everything is set up to play High Definition discs, but the drive won't read them. Can I purchase an enternal player to play the discs or will a regular HD dvd player serve the same purpose?

Imac Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Sep 1, 2006 10:26 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 2, 2006 6:03 AM in response to cmleidig

You probably misunderstood what you were being told. The iMac is capable of playing HD video... but not from an HD-DVD disc. No Mac computer has an HD-DVD capable drive. You will not be able to use those discs in your current iMac. There may be an external HD-DVD drive that you could use... but to my knowledge, there aren't any that are compatible with OS X yet.

Additionally, Apple is more likely to support Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. It may be quite some time before either format is officially supported by Apple.

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Answer 2

cmleidig Author

Level 1

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Sep 2, 2006 5:44 PM in response to Rich Fleming

I asked point blank if the drive would play HD-DVD discs. I was told on more than one occasion that this was true. I specifically made a point of asking this because I had won HD-DVDs. The CSR I talked to last night apologized as he verified that I had indeed asked and been given the wrong information--helped that I sent along emails I had been sent telling me that I could watch the PERFECT STORM HD-DVD in my computer drive.

I can understand being confused, but if you're not sure, don't give a definite answer. I've since found that there are no external drives that are compatible with Os X.

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Answer 3

Sep 2, 2006 9:19 PM in response to cmleidig

HD-DVD and BluRay are so new that it could hardly be expected to play in a consumer level machine like the iMac.

The stand alone players are about $1000.

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Answer 4

MaxJG

Level 1

65 points

Sep 8, 2006 6:21 PM in response to cmleidig

I really don't know, but I am an xbox 360 owner, and they will be offering a standalone HD-DVD player later this year. I have no idea if it will even work with a pc, but if so, it probably works with a mac.

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Answer 5

Sep 19, 2006 4:05 PM in response to Rich Fleming

Do you think there will be a problem connecting an external blu-ray or HD DVD player to the new Intel iMacs and be able to use Apple's DVD player? Would such players likely use the Firewire 800 port?

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Answer 6

Sep 19, 2006 5:32 PM in response to sillyputty1967

I won't even try to guess at those answers.
I believe it's too soon to make any predictions about compatibility and connectivity.

As an aside... how on earth did you manage to register for Apple Discussions more than 2 years into the future? 11/30/2008 ?? 😉

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