Adding a blue-ray drive to a laptop without one

[xipirho]

Hello

I'm thinking about getting a Sony SZ series laptop, but the one thing they seem to lack is blue-ray. I know the FZ (and AR?) have it, but they're bigger and the battery's not so good. Any idea if fitting a blue-ray drive would be possible later on (once they're a bit faster maybe too)? I'm guessing it could be tricky as the shape of the outer casing of laptops differs usually...

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Cheers.

[Xirurg]

i dont think you ll see blu-ray in SZ in near future...

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You can always add one as an external USB / Firewire solution, but as a slip in part then it would need to fit the form factor.

You could probably use a generic one like a Ricoh or something, but you'd want to make sure you can make the bezel fit, and that may be the harder part, sony likes to keep you buying Sony upgrades, not making it easy to swap in OEM/3rd party parts.

[Snowsurfer]

I don't see a reason why you couldn't add it on easily, I added one to mine, all I had to do was swap the old mounting screw bracket onto the new drive (extremely easy) and swap the bezel, it should snap off the original drive, just put it on the new one. You'll also need software like Cyberlink or Nero 8 with HD plug-in ($100). Should be an easy install.

[Wiz33]

I'm doing the same thing. I just got a ASUS M50SV-A1 instead of a B1 (with blu-ray) because of the T9300 in the A1 vs the T8100 in the B1. I'm planing on getting a Blu-ray for it later this year when slim blu-ray drive are a bit cheaper.

Your only concern is if HDCP is part of the laptop architecture (since the don't have a model with blu-ray). but worst case you can get around that with "AnyDVD HD".

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah snowsurfer, the only issue is whether or not Sony make it easy to fange the face plate, with the one the SZ has if you can't replace it it would leave a pretty big angled gap. Should be easy enough otherwise.

Hey snow, you done for the season or are you still headin' out to the mtns?

Gonna get some big dumps of snow in the park here over the next 2 days.