Upgrading to a Blu Ray Drive?

Hi,

Basically, how easy will it be to get hold of a Blu ray drive for the R560? - I just dont want to compromise on a NVidia 9200M GFX card just to get the R610 with a blu ray drive already.

Thanks,
Marc

 

The first post in this thread includes the R560 specs and indicates that the optical drive is 9.5mm thick. Samsung show Blu-Ray as an option but it is not being shipped because 9.5mm thick Blu-Ray burners have not yet come off the production line (but are expected during the coming year).

If you want HD movie capability then the R610 with 1960 x 1080 display would be the best choice. However, it's gaming potential is poor compared with the R560. The R560's display is the comparatively low resolution 1280 x 800. I presume that you would plan to pay Blu-Ray movies on a HD TV connected to the HDMI port.

John

 

Hi John.
Thanks, and as you can see... my predicament.

I have a PS3 so gaming isnt my top priority on a laptop, however i heard that the 9200m is not good for any games really.(even though it has 512MB ram??)

So the R560 is a better spec, but the screen and lack of a blu ray player are annoying, but they are upgradable right? as a graphics card isnt really.

 

I think you have answered your own question: Gaming on the notebook isn't an important requirement.

However, see what is playable on the NC10 then compare the GMA950 (#147) with the 9200M GS (#86) using notebookcheck's table. The 9200M GS is significantly faster than the 8400M GS which was last year's budget gaming GPU. You might, however, want to reduce the display resolution if gaming on the hi-res version of the R610.

At the moment a bare notebook Blu-ray burner costs ~£150 and upgrading displays is likely to be similar, if not more.

And you should assume that the GPU is not upgradable.

John

 

hmmm, but how easily upgradable is the DVD to BDROM drive going to be? atm i cant find any samsung notebook BDROMs and even when I got one, how much of a video quality difference is the R610s screen to the R560s?

 

All the notebook optical drives are standard modules that are either 12.7mm, 9.5mm or 7mm thick. They are held in place by one or two screws, often on the bottom of the computer but may be under the keyboard. They used to have parallel ATA (PATA) interfaces but are now transitioning to SATA.

I don't know who makes the Blu-Ray drive in the R610. It may not be, and doesn't need to be, Samsung.

The R610 with 1960 x 1080 display would be able to handle all the Blu-Ray detail, but you would need to sit quite close to see it. The other question (which I can't answer) is whether Blu-Ray would add any quality above DVD if viewed on the R560's 1280 x 800 display.

John