With prices on Blu-ray drives making its way to mid $100 range, some of you are probably considering purchasing one. Or maybe you’re just putting together a list of components that you’re going to order in that new system which you plan to have a Blu-ray drive. Before you do, you need to consider if the other parts of your system are adequate enough to properly play the disc. If you’re looking to find out what you may need to upgrade, here’s a helpful tool from Cyberlink that I found that should help you out.

Cyberlink BD / HD Advisor (Beta)
http://www.cyberlink.com/english/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past year, you know there’s really no reason to scan for HD DVD support. HD DVD’s are suffering the same fate as Laserdisc and Betamax players (for those old enough to remember what they are).

Blu-ray Advisor start page

Here’s the summary after running the scan for Blu-ray disc support. Note that my Durabook laptop is not a good candidate for a Blu-ray drive.

Blu-ray Advisor Results Page 

By clicking on the ‘info’ icon on the appropriate line, it will open up an internet browser link with information for each individual item that does not meet the necessary requirements.

For those of you who would like a quick summary of recommended hardware/software:

CPU:
Intel (Recommended):
Pentium EE 840 3.2 GHz, 955 3.4 GHz or 965 3.73 GHz, Pentium D 945 3.4 GHz, 950 3.4 GHz or 960 3.6 GHz, Core Duo T2500 2.0 GHz, T2600 2.16 GHz, or T2700 2.33 GHz, Core 2 Duo E6300 1.8 GHz, E6400 2.13 GHz, E6600 2.4 GHz, E6700 2.66 GHZ or X6800 2.93 GHz, T7200 2.00 GHz, T7400 2.16 GHz, T7600 2.33 GHz, Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz, Core 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66 GHz, or X6800 2.93 GHz or better
AMD (Recommended):
Athlon 64 FX FX-60 2.6 GHz or FX-62 2.8 GHz, Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz, 4400+ 2.2 GHz,  4600+ 2.4 GHz, 4800+ 2.4 GHz or 5000+ 2.6 GHz, Turion 64 X2 TL-60 2.0 GHz
RAM: 1GB
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Graphics Card:   256MB RAM, HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) compliant*
Display: HDCP Compliant*
Software: you’ll need software to play Blu-ray content such as Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra HD and WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray.

*If your device isn’t HDCP compliant, you’re wasting time as you’ll be playing back the media through an analog signal which defeat the purpose of purchasing the Blu-ray drive or it may fail to play altogether.