Upgrade older dv6000t to Blu-Ray?

The newest HP laptops can be purchased with dvd/blu-ray/cd combo drives. Would this be an easy DIY upgrade to my dv6000t that currently has a dvd drive?

 

Blu-ray also requires a certain type of video card if I remember correctly.

 

You also need HDMI output on your notebook. Internally, its not going to happen. They do have USB BD drives.. for a price like a grand. And I am not sure those have a HDMI either. Probably only good for burning BD data discs. I am curious if you could watch movies with an external BD drive. Does anyone know? But there insanely expensive at any rate. But maybe later the price would go down. Like I said, the studios want a complete digital path with the DRM so I doubt you would ever be able to view Hi definition on your laptop screen. Because of all the copy protection upgrading older systems to BD will probably not be happening. And now that Sony has won the war its going to be worse for consumers since the manufacturing costs to build BD drives and media are more expensive.. IMO. Now that the competition is out of the way I expect content to remain rather pricey and forget the deals where they throw in a bunch of BD titles with the purchase of a new player. I like the idea of BD technology just not the people who are controlling it.. but thats a completely different subject

 

So what's different in the current HP dv6xxx series that are coming through with the combo BR/DVD/CD drives as standard equipment? It's hard to tell from the specs, but it doesn't look like they have the upgraded video cards.

 

Wouldn't a Playstation 3 be cheaper than a blu-ray drive.

 

The GPU. You need a compatible BD graphics card with HDMI output. The cards are upgraded for sure. When the 6000t was made the nvidia 8xx series was not out. You need a card like the 8400m gs or 8600gt etc.. to do BD. They have not been making compatible GPU's for BD or HD DVD drives for very long. You have to understand because the resolution is so good the studios put allot more copy protection in them that include an HDMI output. A Blu Ray drive is not the same as a DVD drive.. not even close. The main difference is you have to preserve a pure digital path to maintain the hi definition source because otherwise the DRM on the disc will either downgrade the resolution or turn off the video. If you are thinking upgrading a BD drive is like a more common DVD drive.. you are wrong.

Does your system have a HDMI? Probably not. And that means upgrading your system is probably impossible. The 6000T had the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400, 128 MB Dedicated + 128 MB Shared GPU and only s-video or VGA output. This card with the S-video or VGA will not work with blu ray.

Your cheapest solution is to buy a stand alone player. And you also will need a HI DEF TV that has HMDI of course. Make sure that TV is at least 46 inches if you want to appreciate the benefits of Hi definition.

Personally, I don't see the benefits of getting a BD drive for a laptop. Mainly since the screen is too small on a laptop to appreciate the increase in resolution.. You need a much bigger screen for that. So you would have to output it from a laptop to TV with a HDMI cable. At which point.. whats the point. If you are going to watch it on a HI definition TV you might as well get a stand alone player. The only real advantage I see for Blu ray on the computer is for data. You can burn large amounts of data on a single disc on BD. But even that is impractical at this time since the blank media is still insanely expensive.

 

Yea, I agree with everyone in this thread. The Blue Ray upgrade from HP will run you 400. An internal Blue Ray player/burner for a desktop will run you 400. And the cheapest Blue Ray player from Sony is 400, so you might as well just get one for your HDTV. Too much work to try to ungrade a notebook for Blue Ray capability.

 

Not if you want to carry it around with you.

 

That explains it perfectly. Thanks to all who responded.

 

What about a AMD based laptop that came standard with HDDVD?
Can a BD be plugged in and expected to work?

 

This poses another question, can a HD drive be swapped in a non HD drive dv9000?

 

Edit..At this point I would say if you have a HDMI output it may be possible. You need to contact HP as to whether the BD drive would be compatible with you GPU.

 

I have the GeForce Go 7600 graphics card with 256MB of dedicated VRAM & an HDMI output on my 9225, specs here, so that'd mean I'd be "good to go"?

 

I did some research on this and it looks like that system was offered with HD DVD originally. HP has just recently started offering Blu ray drives. The fact that you do have HDMI is a good start.. thats a mandatory output for blu ray. I am not going to say if it would work or not. I would contact HP about this or maybe somebody else can respond if they have successfully upgraded a HP to BD. But being that HD DVD is essentially a dead format, HP will no doubt be hearing from those wanting to do this upgrade.

 

I asked because I noticed it doesn't say HD on the tray like some HP notebooks do as mine reads just lightscribe.

Since CompUSA is going out of biz, the 15GB HD blank discs are 50% off & that'd a be a great disc for my iTunes back up!

 

What I meant was that system offered HD DVD as an option. Most did not come that way since that was a expensive option to add.

I suggest going to the device manager and seeing what windows lists that drive as.. It should tell you more about the drive. If if were really a HD DVD drive I am sure it would say that somewhere. Most likely it would have been made by Toshiba who made most of those drives.

Another good question is how long will Toshiba or other third party companies make media for these drives? I don't know if there were ever enough HD DVD optical drives made to support them going forward. Most likely, it probably won't be long when there won't be any media available for this format.