MCE Technologies’s MCE Fovea Extreme 3 is a portable, lightweight, USB 3.0 slot-loading optical drive that allows access to all Blu-ray, DVD, and CD optical disc formats on Macs with no built-in optical drive.

It can read and record data and high definition video to 25GB, 50GB, 100GB, and 128GB Blu-ray recordable discs, as well as M-Disc Blu-ray media. Included with the drive is Mac Blu-ray Player software, allowing the playback of commercial Blu-ray titles in high definition directly on the Mac.

The Fovea Extreme 3 is great for Mac users who still prefer keeping hard copy collections of their favorite CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray movies, as well as professional photographers and videographers, among others, continue to distribute their work on physical DVD and Blu-ray discs that their clients can hold in their hands and save. The Fovea Extreme 3 provides full access to all this optical media on the Mac for viewing, editing, distributing, and further archiving.

The Fovea Extreme 3 connects to a single USB 3.0 port on the Mac, for all data and power needs, using the included USB 3.0 cable. It is also backwards compatible with Macs with USB 2.0 ports. The Fovea Extreme 3 can record data and video to high capacity 25GB single-layer and 50GB dual-layer write-once Blu-ray BD-R media at 6X (27MB/sec), to 100GB triple-layer and 128GB quad-layer write-once Blu-ray BD-R XL media at 4X (18MB/sec), and to 25GB, 50GB, and 100GB rewritable BD-RE discs at up to 2X (9MB/sec).

The drive is also compatible with M-Disc 25GB Blu-ray discs, designed to be able to last 1000 years, for permanent storage and archival of important photos, videos, and documents. The Fovea Extreme 3 includes Mac Blu-ray Player software for the playback of commercial Blu-ray movies directly on the Mac in high definition. The drive works with Apple’s DVD Player application for the playback of DVD movies as well as with Finder Burning for burning Blu-ray Discs, DVDs and CDs at the Finder level.

The drive is bootable, can install software and applications, and is also fully compatible with all DVD and CD recordable media on the market today and can record to standard DVDR media at up to 8X (11MB/sec) speed, to DVDR DL (Double/Dual Layer) media at up to 4X (5.5MB/sec) speed, to DVDRW at up to 6X speed, and to CD-R and CD-RW media at up to 24X speed.

The Fovea Extreme 3 measures only 5.6 x 5.9 x 0.75 inches and weighs in at only 11 ounces. It retails for US$119 and is available immediately at http://tinyurl.com/mby29pg.