CAN ANYONE TELL ME IF I CAN ADD A BLU RAY DRIVE TO MY SONY VGX-XL301!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[admin_exported]

iI am looking to upgrade my disc drive on my sony vgx-xl301 media centre to a blu ray drive. I don't think this should be a problem as the vgx-xl302 model had a blu ray drive as standard. trouble is i can't seem to find out what the disc drive model was and where to get one from.

if anyone can help this would be great, or even suggest an external drive that would be as good.

 

[FazZ]

Hey 'm1rfy' have you sorted you problem out?

Sony classes this thing as a HTPC, so I assume it's based on desktop parts?ÿ Of course this may not be the case, as some of their previous media PC's (since 2001) have used laptop optical drives and 2.5" HDD in a slim line type media PC.ÿ Sadly like DEL, the PSU's would short live itself (24hrs out of warranty of course) and as none of it is standard PC gear, making ÿit very hard to find and when you do. cha-ching £££.

If your Sony HTPC has space in there for a 3.5" optical drive, you can pretty much shove in anything you like.ÿ Of course this also depends on the OS installed, but this shouldn't really be any problem.

If the HTPC has some strange looking slot, that is smaller than a 3.5" you will probably need to spend lots of money on an official Sony part or the easiest and safest (if more costly) is to go with an external optical drive.

The great thing with external drives, you can get rather long and reliable cables (sold separately) to replace the one that comes with the drive and run the drive somewhere else for better convenience or to hide it away if you find it too noisy.

I've had resent good experience with the (internal) LG BluRay R's (readers) and RW's (writers), and personally prefer them over the slightly more expensive Panasonic's and Sony's.
If you do open up your HTPC, see what random motherboard is inside and check it up on-line before spending any money, just in case Sony have fixed some limitations on the motherboard, even though I wouldn't imagine they made anything in there), but you 'may' have to firmware update the motherboard or buy a certain brand and model optical drive.

Remember, if you go external get a decent one and preferably one with either eSATA (300) or Firewire (400).ÿ USB (2) is OK and usually cheaper, but will draw on your HTPC's CPU and memory.ÿ The majority of USB devices pull on the computers CPU and can cause issues with smooth movie playback, especially with the bandwidth required for HD movies.ÿ SATA and Firewire cost more, because they have their own controllers/CPU's inbuilt and will require very little from the PC, freeing up valuable CPU cycles and better on bandwidth, giving a much improved HD movie playback.