P-6831FX HD-DVD & Blue-Ray Both Tried and Work Fine.

Installed both the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray internal players and both work fine. My only problem was the Nero 8 HD plug-in it was a hit or miss depending on the movie, the HD-DVD played much more dependable with this software, I talked to Nero's support which is quite good (If you don't have to pay for it), and they mentioned a patch is on the way, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, 300, Van Helsing in HD-DVD played well, Terminator 3 and Kingdom of Heaven Blue-ray would not play and would crash after intro, but Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses in Blue-Ray played well. These play back problems are software related and Nero will address them, otherwise Cyberlink software should work. So to sum it all, your FX, even the Bestbuy special is HD ready

 

Great to know before plopping down the ~350 or so! That is my next upgrade.

 

Yeah whats cool is the optical drive is very easy to remove and install, I just leave the single screw out and slide the different drives in and out depending on which format I what to use, damn near as easy as using a usb thumb drive! I used Nero because I already had Nero 8 installed so it was only $29 for the HD-DVD Blue-ray plug in, vs $100 for cyberlink's software, I think those are the only options for software.

 

I've heard but not tried Any DVD HD is supposed to work well with any drive. Might give that a try I guess.

 

Could you list the Blu-Ray drive you used?

 

What form factor is the optical drive anyways?
Are there any HDD/batteries for this form factor?
If not, then what differs a smartbay (AW, Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc) from this standard optical drive form factor in terms of wiring/socket?

 

Sony BD-5500A

You guys come up with some wacked questions!!!!

 

Thanks for the link, might look into a purchase one day soon. +Rep for you.

 

Well, the optical drives are of a standard form factor that also exist in other laptops, right? What is the name of said form factor?

 

I believe the form factor is called a slim drive, look up the drive for full specs. Batteries? You don't need no stink'in batteries Not sure what you were looking for there.

I'll probably jump on a drive when the price is 1/3 the price of a PS3 or my wife will have me killed..

Thanks for the info Snowsurfer, may you get fresh powder during the night.

 

I'm in the same boat, but I personally will wait until the Blu-ray 2.0 is finalized here shortly. If you want the added features in 2.0, you'll want the newer format drive. If you don't care the 1.0 version drives will probably be a lot cheaper anyway, and may be firmware upgradeable to be able to recognize the additional features 2.0 offers anyway (or maybe hacked firmware?).

 

Bluetooth profiles are mostly software updates for the features. The hardware changes are for set-top players only...

(2.0 requires a secodary and primary decoder (CPU), internet connectivity support(ethernet), 1GB storage (hard drive).)