Help! Blu-ray burner for Laptop

[manhattanboy]

Hi, I am new to this forum so apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere (tried searching).

I am about to order a new Dell Studio 16 XPS laptop. A blu-ray burner is not available as an option (curiously, you can get one on the older 15 inch XPS which is being discontinued).

At some point down the road I plan on buying a high def video camera and would like to edit and save my high def content to dvd for playback in my dvd (blu-ray) player.

Am I correct in that you can burn high def content to a normal dvd using a typical dvd burner but that the dvd will not store nearly as much content as a blu-ray disc (maybe 30 mins or so on a normal dvd)?

I guess an external blu ray burner is an option when the time comes to buy a high def camera. Ideally my new latop would have a blu ray burner but I can't find one I like (not a big fan of Sony Vaio).

Many thanks.
Ron