Blu-ray drive replacement for Dell XPS M1710

Got a relatively old but still relevant Dell XPS M1710 which I bought sometime around 2007.  The specification of the machine is still respectable even by today’s standards:  Intel Core 2 T7400 (2.16 Ghz), Nvidia GeForce Go 7900GS, upgraded memory to 4GB  and replaced 160Gb HDD to 500GB running Windows Xp SP3.  Only thing missing now to update this device for 2009 was a blu-ray optical drive .  First thing I did was to download, install and run Cyberlink’s BD Advisor to determine if the XPS M1710 hardware components can suitably playback Blu-ray content. Results are all green for components with the exception of the graphics card (Nvidia GeForce 7900GS) which displayed yellow (upgrade required) and of course the current optical DVD drive a TSSTcorp DVD +/- RW TS-L632D.  Purchased a NU EBC100 external super slim Blu-ray combo drive, which at the time of writing, was the only available slim Blu-ray drive in the Dubai market.  Did try to buy online, but some of the blu-ray drive sellers were a bit on the shady side and the original Dell replacement drive was hard to come by.  Removed the four screws of the NU EBC100 (underneath the anti slide rubber) to reveal a Matshita BD-CMB UJ-120 inside.  Proceeded to remove the other holding screws to release the UJ-120 from the plastic (an a bit cheap feeling) enclosure. 

With the XPS M1710 turned off, turn the unit on its back and remove the screw holding the current optical drive in place (you may need to give it a bit of a push to relase the unit).  Slide the UJ-120 into the now emply optical bay and screw it in place.  There is a slight recess when the blu-ray drive is installed as this is a bit shorter than the original drive, I choose to live with this.  Booted the machine went into BIOS to determine is the Matshita BD-CMB UJ-120 was detected.  Booted into Windows XP and the drive was detected and drivers were installed without any problems.

Next task would be to install blu-ray play-back software.  The NU EBC100 comes with a Cyberlink BD solution disc (powerDVD, PowerProducers, Power2Go, Powerbackup and InstandBurn).  Installed PowerDVD 7.3.  Firing up the software required me to patch the it to the latest update for the 7.x software.  Only to be plagued with unrecoverable errors when starting the application.  Uninstalled and re-installed PowerDVD with the same results.  Fortunatley, I have powerDVD 9 and blu-ray playback is functional.

On to some of my complaints.  The UJ-120 take a bit of time to load a blu-ray movie.  During my initial tests (used a region free blu-ray disc Ultraviolet and a region B disc The Day After Tomorrow), the disc detection was hit and miss.  You can hear the drive trying very hard to load the disc and almosts hangs XP when you open an explorer window.  Rebooted a couple of times with the same results, tried booting with the blu-ray disc inside the drive the the movie was finally detected.  Obvisouly I don’t want to keep on rebooting my machine when I change blu-ray discs.  But somehow the drive started to read the blu-ray discs after the first sucessful movie playback.  At this point I will take this as it is. 

When the disc loads, playback is seamless without any noticeable problems, however, the movie feels a bit washed out compared to blue-ray playback on my LG Flatron W3000H computer display and LCD TV. I guess, this is just me.  Normal DVD, data discs and BD-R and BD-RE loads fine without any problems. 

It is a bit too early to give out a verdict, the project for me was a roller-coaster of emotions from finding the blu-ray drive on the local market (elated), discovering the slight recess when docked (bit peeved), detection problems (bummed out), resolved issues (a sigh of relief).  The end state of the Dell XPS M1710 with the newly installed blu-ray drive will be as a PC media player connected to my bedroom home theater setup, but that will be tacked in another post in the future.

~ by neuromancer on July 25, 2009.