According Apple Insider, Apple wanted to propose a MacBook Pro Penryn with a Blu-ray reader. However this was delayed due to quality problems of the device, certainly the BC-5600S, the only device that could fit into these machines.
The other problems are related to the battery life of the computer when reading these disks. In effect, the blue laser consumes more power than the DVD reader and also the decoding of these videos (H.264 for the Blu-ray) uses an enormous amount of processor power.
This last point can be largely overcome due to the latest generation of video cards. Hardware.fr illustrates this problem in an article.
However, most video cards do not help at all, thus the processor itself must do all the decoding. On a portable, one will have the fans running at full power and one can not get more than 1 hour of use on battery power. However, newer cards, like Radeon HD 2600 XT or Geforce 8800 based on the GPU G92 (such as the 8800 GT) already manage to give a big help to the CPU. The Geforce in particular make it possible to decrease CPU load by more than half of what is already colossal.
However, it will be necessary to go even further, and to reach only 20 to 30% of this load otherwise the battery power is not sufficient. It is necessary that the processors enter this low power mode.
While waiting, and if Apple resolve their problems with the AACS LA, it will be already interesting tp propose this solution for the Mac Pro, a machine that has enough power to read and to author this type of media.
[translation by crispin]
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