We realized that Mac OS X supports many Blu-ray functions.
To start, the system, without any additional software, mounts a commercial Blu-ray disc containing a film without any problem. It is, however, impossible to play it, because of the missing HDCP support on the Mac Pro and Apple's screens, but also because of the fact that DVD Player crashes if such a disc is inserted.
But we were surprised to see that the compatibility extends further.
Indeed, at the insertion of a blank BD-R disc, you are prompted with the usual following message:
System Profiler also recognizes the media as a BD-R:
Tiger was totally ignorant of this type of media. If you click on OK, you find a burnable volume mounted:
As you can see, the icon corresponds to a Blu-ray disc, as well as its capacity.
We decided to test our luck by filling the disc and burning it, fearing for the worst.
Against all odds, the burner launched and ran perfectly well. At the end of all this, we had a disc containing our files, which we were able to access fine.
Having arrived at this point, we decided to push our luck with a rewritable disc, a BD-RE
Once again, it was perfectly recognized, and once the burn finished we once again had a perfectly readable disc.
But of course if this disc could not really be erased, it would be lacking its principle aspect of interest. And there, Disk Utility fulfilled our desires.
A quick erase, taking a few seconds, suffices to bring the disk back to a blank state so that it is once again ready to be burned.
So, from now on it is possible to do backups directly in OS X to this type of media. Although it is still expensive, its capacity and certainly its resistance to scratches should interest some professionals.
