When will desktop PCs come with internal BD-RE drives?

[Bruce Morrison]

Hi everyone, this is my first post in this section of the forums (I'm usually in the Blu-ray software section).

My current Dell desktop PC is four years old and seems to be getting rather slow in some situations, so I'm hoping to replace it during this year. However, I would ideally like my next PC to have an integrated rewritable Blu-ray drive, which I would want to use for data backups. I've checked the Dell website and the optical drive on their current models is still just a DVD read/write drive that can also read/play BDs (but not write to BD-RE discs). This also seems to be true of Hewlett Packard's current range.

So my question is - how much longer is it likely to be before an integrated BD-RE drive becomes the standard optical drive on desktop PCs? (Or are there any desktop PCs that already have this?)

Any information/suggestions would be gratefully received.

[Stillhouse]

Can't say for certain. Depends on consumer demand mostly. The economy will be a factor as well, both for the consumer and manufacturer.

Why not just buy the PC you want/need and add a BD drive yourself? If you're wary about installing it, they're pretty much one of the easiest parts to install.

[quetzalcoatl]

Since I see you are in the UK I cannot say for sure what you are seeing over there. But in the states there are computers with drives pre-installed. As to how long until it becomes the norm for writeable drives I would still say we have aways to go. The media is still not cost affective to most people.

But as was said it is a very easy piece of hardware to install so just find what you want and swap out the DVD drive with a BD.

[BLindsay]

i would say it comes down to price still. My laptop came with a BD-RE drive but it was $1200 after 25% off. But yeah you could always get a computer and add the drive later.

[DrasticPlastic]

you can always add an external blu ray drive it you are worried about installing it yourself, which is still extremely easy.

[tlmaclennan]

I don't think it will be a standard drive for a long time, but most computer manufacturers offer an upgrade to a blu-ray drive.

[bluflu]

Came across the following article on the subject.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/con...read-its-wings

Blu-ray Ready to Spread Its Wings

By :Thomas K. Arnold | Posted: 09 Jan 2010
tarnold@questex.com,

I had a very interesting conversation with a gentleman from Intel this afternoon on the show floor of CES in Las Vegas. Demonstrating Intel's new core processors, he noted that computers are being asked to do so much more these days, particularly in the way of high-definition video, that processor speed needs to come up -- hence, Intel's new line, which even has a "turbo" function to really rev things up when needed. He held up a JVC high-definition video camera and told me the cost has come down by half since Christmas, and when I told him I had held off buying one mainly because I wasn't sure my computer could handle it, he said, "Yeah, don't waste your time burning high-definition video of your summer vacation to DVD. You need Blu-ray."

That opened up a whole conversation about Blu-ray's current limitation in the portability realm, including the conspicuous lack of Blu-ray Disc drives in laptops and PCs. That's all about to change, he told me, because the cost of these Blu-ray Disc drives has plummeted.

"It used to be it would add $200 or $300 to the cost of a laptop, and when you're talking about a list price of $600 to $800, that's a big deal," he said. "But now, the upcharge can be as little as $100, so now it finally makes sense."

Hopefully he's right. For Blu-ray to really flourish, we need mass playback devices, and that includes computers. I continue to be amazed that Blu-ray drives are not yet standard in computers, particularly given the capacity issues we're now facing across the board with virtually all media. Three years ago the average digital image, from a point-and-click digital camera, was 800K; today, it's 5MB. And as my friend at Intel said, "We're now looking at 4GB of high-def video footage, just from a kid's birthday party." My hunch is that particularly now that the price of drives has fallen, we're going to see a proliferation of computers with Blu-ray Disc drives, maybe even as standard equipment. To not do so at ths point simply doesn't make any sense."

At the same time, I expect more portable Blu-ray disc players such as the one displayed by Toshiba, and hopefully some car units as well. At the Audiovox booth I saw a new car DVD player with a built-in PlayStation 2. Great idea, I thought to myself, but this is a marriage of two outdated technologies. Why not offer a combo Blu-ray Disc/PlayStation 3 car unit? You'd think that might even be easier, since a PlayStation 3 already has a Blu-ray Disc drive built in. Hey, now that's an idea -- the next generation of car players would simply consist of a PlayStation 3, which can double as a game and movie machine. Sony, are you listening?