6324W HD-DVD or Blu-Ray upgrade?

Hi, i have ordered a 6324 as some of you may already be aware and was just wondering if it will be possible to upgrade the DVD Drive in it to a HD or Blu-Ray drive in the future? (once there is a clear winner in the format war) Would Zepto perhaps acquire an upgrade (from Sony/Samsung or whoever) that you could buy from their site in the future? Would third party manufacturers release one that would be compatible for sale? Or is neither very likely?

I would just like to make my laptop a little bit more future proof you see, thanks in advance

 

Well Blu-Ray looks like its on top now and future projections shows that Blu-Ray has a higher chance to win because there are more movie studios supporting it than HD-DVD.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9740033-1.html

Whenver a format wins or you decide to pick one to go to there will eventually be usb powered drives just like DVD drives are now, So you dont have to worry about internal drives for laptops.

~Eric

 

Internal drives are way more elegant and portable, though .

 

Thanks for the reply both of you. Yeah it appears Blu-Ray is winning because of the PS3 (which is hardly setting the world alight, but since the HD/BR market is soo small, a poorly performing console with BR will still have a HUUGE impact) and the fact that Sony owns Columbia Studios which is pretty handy for them.

So long as i at least have an option i am happy, as i was fearing PC games would switch to the new format(s) sometime soonish leaving me stranded. I may go internal as Eric says or possibly external, but in the end i will balance the cost. If it costs alot more to go internal i'll go external, if the difference is mild then ill go internal as it will look a hell of alot nicer as Ultim4 states

By the way, with regards to an internal drive, Zepto would sell it wouldnt they? Would other drives fit in the Zepto chassis? How would i know a particular drive fits? (sorry im more into the software side of things, im not so good with hardware)

 

After some investigation, I found out here that the 6224w uses a slim drive CD/DVD-RW (for the slot-in option). A similar (but not exact - the Zepto one does not have Lightscribe) model to this can be found here.
A quick google lead me to this website selling blu-ray slim-drives for a variety of Mac computers. Most importantly, there's a slim drive for the MacBook Pro, costing $899.5 (~£447.00). Bear in mind this is a drive for a 17" notebook (I didn't find much on drives for other notebooks), so things may be different for drives for 14" or 15"ers.
This would indicate that it's at least possible to replace a drive with a blu-ray one (for MacBook Pros at any rate). Of course, the bigger questions are whether there'll be one compatible with the 6224W and whether Zepto would carry out the upgrade for you.
Checking Zepto's UK accessories store, they do not currently sell drives separately. Your best bet would be to contact Zepto and ask: if they will be offering such drives, if they will be willing to upgrade one of their laptops with such a drive (for a price), or if they could list any blu-ray drives that they know will be compatible with the 6224w.
Alternatively, you could check out the specs (dimensions and connectors) for the CD/DVD drives currently being shipped and look around for blu-ray drives that meet the same requirements.

I wouldn't worry too much about DVDs getting replaced by blu-ray soon. It will be a while before blu-ray becomes main stream, let alone a replacement. When games do start coming out on blu-ray, I don't doubt they'll still be released for DVD for a while.
Even some recent games released for DVD-ROM still have CD-ROM versions (e.g.: NWN2).

If you do contact Zepto about this, please let us know. I'd be interested to hear what they say.