As most of you know there is a blu-ray drive shortage globally so when I configured my system last week I could only configure it with a lightscribe supermulti dvd/dl drive. However there is a quickship model that comes with a blu-ray drive. Is there anyway for me to purchase the HP blu-ray drive by itself and swap it out for the one I had the system configured with in the future when the drives become available again? I would want it to match my machine so I don't wanna do it with some other brand...it has to be the HP drive that would match my system (if you get what I'm saying?)

I called HP and tried to discuss this with tech support but as usual they are hopeless understanding anything so I thought this would be a good place to ask.

Thanks

Call sales and ask them I think they would be more helpful than tech. Also someone posted similar a week ago and I believe when the drives become available HP was gong to give or sell them one. Also the drives are all very similar the difference model to model or brand to brand are just facial/cover plate. So in other words I think some of your concern should not be concern. If you get a BR take the cover plate from the CD.
Good luck.

Actually, sales is who I originally spoke with first, they were clueless and transferred me to tech support who was even worse then they were. I looked on their accessory page for parts for your system all I saw (right now anyways) was external drives or internal drives for desktops (however none of them were blu-ray.) Also checked ebay...nothing.

Panasonic and Sony are a couple of manufacturers that offer Blu-Ray optical drive for notebooks. Have you tried searching for them? Still in very high price though.

cheers ...

I'll probably start looking only if I keep the system (gotta inspect it for build quality, etc) before I do anything. But I did do a bit of searching earlier and saw a few sony drives that were around 200 bucks (that isn't that bad for Blu-ray.)

Well technically I was correct, sales was "more" helpful.

I hope qhn confirms the notebook BR fit and it is just the face plate? If so when the supply catches up with demand you should have options.

I saw AlienWare is not offering BR so if HP not either then think might be hard for you to find at this time but as said later maybe better luck.

For 3rd party drive replacements, the only best bet is to measure them

Issue is always the face plate as I know of. And don't get any drives that are marked for Toshiba notebooks They are being set up differently from factory.

cheers ...

So I'm assuming blu-ray would work with the system?

Video wise I have the 900p screen with the NVidia GeForce 320M card.

You would need some software that plays Blu-Ray contents though.

cheers ...

Don't you mean movies? LOL...

Yes, that also

cheers ...

What do you mean by "also?" Is software needed to make a blu-ray drive work? I assumed you just needed blu-ray media?

Blu-Ray as device works fine. But in order to play Blu-Ray movies you need commercial software for them, like CyberLink Power DVD at the moment. Windows Media Player (per example) will not be able to play the Blu-Ray contents, meaning you would not be able to see the full effects.

cheers ...

Oh yeah I forgot that you needed player software that supports Blu-ray to actually get the benefit of the HD...although I'm surprised that WMP doesn't support it...I thought they did.

$$$ - MS can't offer that They would get sued.

cheers ...