Toast 9 Features Blu-Ray Video, Streaming

Toast 9 Titanium is the latest edition of Roxio's long-running disc burning software for the Mac. With Toast, you can burn data or video to CDs and DVDs. Toast 8 Titanium, the new version's predecessor, implemented features including TiVo and EyeTV support, data burning to Blu-ray drives and cataloging capabilities.

Toast 9 Titanium is Roxio's new version of its disc burning software for Mac OS X. The new release will retail for $99.99, and will be available initially as a download, with boxed discs to follow later this month. Toast 8 Titanium users will be able to get a $30 discount on the new release.

New to Toast 9 Titanium is the ability to burn high-def video to Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, as well (using an optional $19.99 plug-in, available for free to users who buy the software between now and March 31, 2008). Blu-ray burning is also dependent on having a Blu-ray disc drive -- not available from the factory but now sold as a third-party accessory. Blu-ray video discs can't be played on the Mac, but with this new software you can burn AVCHD video, for example, that you can play back on a Blu-ray Disc player, such as a Sony PlayStation 3.

Roxio has also added TV streaming capabilities, so you can stream QuickTime, DivX, EyeTV and TiVo video from your Mac to another Mac on the Internet, or to your iPhone or iPod touch.

Roxio has enhanced audio capture and tagging in this new release with streaming audio capture, audio "fingerprinting" that identifies and tags music files, and expanded support for MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless and AIFF audio formats.

You can combine multiple DVDs on a single disc using DVD compilation, or queue up multiple VIDEO_TS folders with batch DVD conversion. Pause and resume -- a feature first found in the most recent release of Roxio's Popcorn software -- is now in Toast 9 Titanium.

The user interface has been enhanced with a new Convert tab for audio and video, tool tips, Quick Look support in the Media Browser, larger DVD menu previews, a better project capacity gauge and more.

System requirements call for a G4 or better (G5 or Intel required for encoding and viewing HD content), CD, DVD or Blu-ray recordable drive, Mac OS X v10.4 or later, 600MB hard disk space for installation, 15GB of free space for usage, QuickTime 7.1.3 or later.