We're looking to buy an iMac, but there's no indication of if or when Apple is going to offer Blu-ray drives. Rachael Johnson
It's more than three years since Apple joined the Blu-ray Association's board and more than two years since Sony announced Windows laptops with built-in Blu-ray drives, so Apple's silence is a mystery. The iMac is based on the same Intel technology that is found in Sony and other laptops that play Blu-ray discs when running Windows XP or Vista, so it's not clear why there has been a delay.
However, Apple needs to offer the H.264/AVC High Profile and VC-1 video and various audio codecs, support the Blu-ray Java interface software and implement the required DRM (Digital Rights Management) system -- none of which it appears to do, so far. Monitors must also support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), but Apple's website doesn't actually say if any of its screens support it, and Apple's Cinema Display screens do not. This makes it impossible to predict when Apple will finally offer Blu-ray, but I'd guess it would come with a new range.
You could, of course, connect an external Blu-ray drive, such as the LaCie d2 (£546 at Amazon.co.uk), to an iMac if you wanted to use it for storage. If you want to play commercial Blu-ray movies, I suspect you'd be better off buying a standalone player or a Sony PlayStation 3.
