FZ Blu-Ray Upgrade?

[Nosce]

I bought a VGN-FZ18E a few months ago and am very happy with it. In fact, that's part of my problem. Seeing how good the screen is I want to try out some HD movie content on it. I know that other laptops higher in the series have Blu-ray drives, and since they are based off of the same motherboard my FZ18E should be able to support it.

I was wandering where I could get my hands on a FZ Blu-ray drive that either I could install myself or ship off to Sony to have them do it for me (for warranty's sake). I can't think of any reason why my laptop would reject the drive (since, as I said before, it's got the same base hardware as higher FZ models), and I'm sure that Sony could make a few extra bucks through Blu-ray upgrades like they do with memory modules and higher capacity batteries.

[Blencogo]

Hi Nosce and welcome to the Club.

Although affordable slimline blu-ray players are becoming available in the US, internal drives are still rare in the UK.

http://www.ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=103487

Sony do not do upgrades and any third party replacement would certainly invalidate your warranty. The cost of upgrade would be high as you would have to buy the software to play BD movies - PowerDVD Ultra or WinDVD BD.

It is probably not a realistic proposition at the moment - perhaps an external BD Drive?

[Nosce]

In the months since I asked this question, I stumbled upon this:

Sony NEC Optiarc BC-5500A

It certainly looks the part; it's Serial-ATA (which is what the FZ uses) and comes in at around the same price as an external drive or a drive/enclosure setup, with the added benefit of being an internal drive (very handy for a laptop).

Since that by December this drive may be down in price and my laptop will no longer have a warranty to ruin, it might be worth a try.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Suggestions? Comments? Warnings?