Dell Studio - Adding a Blu Ray drive.

Cmar-Ireland

Hi,

I have a Dell Studio 1535 laptop and I'm wondering if I can replace the stock dvd drive with a blu ray drive. I see them for sale on ebay for £60 - 70. Is it just a matter of swapping them, plug and play?

The laptop has 3gb ram and a Radeon HD 3400 gfx card. I want to use the laptop as a blu ray player to connect to the tv.

Or am I better off buying a stand-alone blu ray player?

Thanks

Rebel021

For a 1737 but from the same family of laptops
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/1735/en/SM/optical.htm#wp1038494
cheaper to replace as a new stand alone player will cost substantially more

Cmar-Ireland

Would my laptop be good enough to use as a player though? It would only be occasional use.

Rebel021

I have a 1737 and use it all the time
I would look for a review of your graphics card to see if it is any good at running blu rays

Ricky91t

I'm replying on my phone so expect typos and bad grammer!IIRC the 1535 is a slot loading drive and therefore would require a totally different drive to the ones in the inspiron 17?i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure you need an actual slot loading drive instead of the 60-70 ones on ebay

Voodu Child

Ricky91t wrote: »

I'm replying on my phone so expect typos and bad grammer!IIRC the 1535 is a slot loading drive and therefore would require a totally different drive to the ones in the inspiron 17?i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure you need an actual slot loading drive instead of the 60-70 ones on ebay

Yep, you'll need a slot-loading drive. More expensive and harder to find.

You'll also need playback software. Im sure your laptop can cope with Blu-Ray playback anyway, that won't be a problem. Your graphics card supports video acceleration, and if you've a decent processor to boot, you'll be grand.

Rebel021

Ricky91t wrote: »

I'm replying on my phone so expect typos and bad grammer!IIRC the 1535 is a slot loading drive and therefore would require a totally different drive to the ones in the inspiron 17?i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure you need an actual slot loading drive instead of the 60-70 ones on ebay

The 1737 is a studio laptop not inspiron
the guide for the 1535 is here
optical here
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/1535/en/SM/optical.htm#wp1179928
Full reference here
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/1535/en/SM/index.htm

Cmar-Ireland

The slot loading drives are around £80 on ebay.

I tried playing an 8gb mkv file on the laptop using vlc and sending it to my plasma tv, but the picture was unwatchable.
It seems the laptop can't handle these big files. I'll try it again with MPC and see if it works.

Based on this, could it be the case that my laptop / gfx card won't be able to handle the demands of a blu ray drive?

thanks

Voodu Child

Cmar-Ireland wrote: »

The slot loading drives are around £80 on ebay.

I tried playing an 8gb mkv file on the laptop using vlc and sending it to my plasma tv, but the picture was unwatchable.
It seems the laptop can't handle these big files. I'll try it again with MPC and see if it works.

Based on this, could it be the case that my laptop / gfx card won't be able to handle the demands of a blu ray drive?

thanks

VLC isn't the best for HD stuff, its quite hoggy and doesnt support any GPU acceleration.

Definitely try MPC, and go through the options and make sure DXVA is enabled for H264 and VC1.

Cmar-Ireland

Voodu Child wrote: »

VLC isn't the best for HD stuff, its quite hoggy and doesnt support any GPU acceleration.

Definitely try MPC, and go through the options and make sure DXVA is enabled for H264 and VC1.

I'll try that tonight and report back.

Cheers

Rebel021

Gom player FTW
http://www.gomlab.com/eng/

Best Media player on the market imo

Cmar-Ireland

Tried MPC and it played the file without any problems. I think I'll make it my default media player now.

Never tried the Gom player, must take a look at it.