My new laptop (I had major problems and issues on my third one; second laptop was destroyed in a carwreck I was in and my first one is literally falling apart because it's a Toshiba) has a Blu-Ray drive built in it. It's an Optiarc BD ROM BC-5500S ATA Device (my laptop is a HP Pavilion dv7-1175nr) and there's no firmware support on HP's website for my model's disc drive. I think the firmware is incorporated with HP's QuickPlay media player, Nvidia's graphics card driver updates (NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT with Nvidia PureVideo HD) or the BIOS.

I checked Sony's Optiarc website and their firmware for my model is way lower than what's currently on mine (1.04 on their website while mine is at 1.83). It's got me wondering if or when Microsoft's Vista Service Pack 2 is released soon if I can get any benefits out of it, or when Windows 7 is released later on (I wouldn't bother with the Beta, even though I have a disc with it on there and the key) if there's any support. Besides, it's a total shame that Microsoft has no support whatsoever for Blu-Ray playback on the Windows Media Center for Windows 7, even though they own the VC-1 codec for it.

http://windows7news.com/2009/03/07/no-windows-7-blu-ray-support/

APC are reporting that Microsoft will not include Blu-Ray playback capabilities in Windows 7. Adding Blu-Ray support to Windows would increase the costs of the operating system by about $30. The real question is if missing Blu-Ray support is really a kill criteria for an operating system. As of now it surely isn’t with DVD sales being stronger than ever and Blu-Ray sales still lagging behind by a huge margin. The amount of users who would use Windows 7 to play Blu-Ray movies can surely be neglected at this point as most hardware Blu-Ray players for personal computers are expensive and not 100% compatible with all Blu-Ray features.

Users who want Blu-Ray playback on their computer systems can purchase a third party software which will not cost that much more than the projected $30 that universal Blu-Ray support would cost. Everyone else will be happy that they do not have to pay for a feature that they would never use.

The majority of Windows XP users learned to live without DVD playback support for a long time and they did not have a problem finding third party software to fill the gap. If the demand is there free third party solutions will appear that can be used to play Blu-Ray movies on Windows 7.

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And to think that Windows 7 is shipping with the H.264/AVC codec as well! lol...

Download the Windows Vista SP2 RC that includes BR support here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=dca54ecc-362a-4b4d-b62b-22780e839a7e&displaylang=en

Includes native BR-recording support.

Edit: This includes BR recording support only.  Try PowerDVD.

Thanks, but I'd rather wait until the full SP2 comes out. PowerDVD is nice, I'd want it, but it's too much and I'll have to wait until I get more money from working. Damn economy...

That's odd, my BR installed automatically (windows 7), although maybe that's because there is a lot of extras in my version.

From what i heard the sp2 for Vista includes a bluray support package, so don't worry. Probably by 2010 we'll have loads of free blu ray movie players on the internet for free download.

strange, my laptop came with a BR drive and it works with vista sp1