I recently saw that there are already UHD 4K Blu-ray drives (with SATA) available, like this one from Pioneer which should (combined with appropriate USB housing) make mounting the disks in macOS possible. So I was wondering if I can get UHD Blu-ray playback on my new iMac 5K 2017 working?
Concerning hardware there should be no problem with its Kaby Lake processor (required for decryption) and HEVC hardware acceleration, right? The AMD Radeon Pro 580 should also support HDCP 2.2, however I'm not sure about the built-in display…
Regarding software:
As of my understanding AACS 2.0 has not been cracked yet, so ripping is out of question at the moment. But there seems to be software for Windows which supports UHD BD playback, like the newest version of PowerDVD. However, I wasn't able to find an equivalent software for macOS.
I found serveral "guides" and "how to"s, listing software they claim to support UHD BD playback (and even ripping), but none of the companys official websites advertise such a feature.
Has anyone got playback of 4K Blu-Rays on the Mac working, tried it or has any experience on this topic whatsoever? Am I right about my assumptions regarding the hardware support?
Thanks in advance!
P.S.: I hope this is the right branch to post this question to. Please redirect if it isn't.
UPDATE: I just installed Windows 10 with Bootcamp and ran CyberLink's "UHD Blu-ray Advisor" to check my hardware. These are my results:
I'm not completely sure what to take out of this. Either there really are hardware problems or it is just some compatibility/driver issue with Bootcamp (that maybe doesn't occur in macOS). The Intel i7 7700K does support Intel SGX according to Intel but the feature could be disabled…?
It most certainly means that playback with PowerDVD (also from CyberLink) in Bootcamp will not be possible (at this stage).
Could it really be that HDCP 2.2 isn't supported due to the iMac's hardware? Does anyone know of a similar diagnostics tool for macOS?
Best Answer
Yes, you can get UHD working through that blu-ray drive. Copyright decrypting, hardware acceleration etc are all features implemented in prior chips so they're definitely in Kaby Lake. Display is HDCP 2.2.
I think the biggest difficulty here will likely be in finding good software. I would plan on having to buy some, shop around and find the best one for you. I don't have any recommendations for software but I know that it should work & looking around there's at least some software that claims to do this.