R61 + Panasonic UJ220 Bluray combo compatiblity

[dances_with_woof]

I'd like to add a Bluray to my 15" standard R61, and all the information says that the Panasonic UJ220 is the standard one that is listed (I forget the official FRU). Does anyone know if any Panasonic UJ220 will work, or if it has to be the "official" Lenovo version? Are there other players out there known to work with the R61? I put a Boe-Hydis HV150-UX2 in this machine only to discover that most streaming services have switched to double-letter boxing for 4:3 content, leaving one with a tiny square surrounded by black on a 4:3 monitor. Buying Blurays may be the only way to watch some of my favorite classic content in a non-cropped format.

Also, I've read that one must be careful about region-lock with the UJ220, that it permanently switches into American, European, etc. region after it has been used a few times. Preferably I would like one that can play all Blurays, and if that's possible, either by firmware or hardware

[theterminator93]

I don't think it needs to be the Lenovo specific drive. I think the FRU is 43N3200.

Certain drives support "Libredrive" (when using MakeMKV) which bypasses the firmware locks on region, and lets the software access the bitstream on the disc directly - rather than having the drive pass it along only once it does region checks, encryption checks etc.

[axur-delmeria]

You won't be able to install a non-Thinkpad optical drive on the R61, because the connector is different. The R60 and R61 (as well as the earlier R50/51/52 series) use Ultrabay Enhanced, which have a non-standard IDE connector-- it's the same connector as the Ultrabay Slim drives found in the T40 and T60 families, but the Enhanced ones are thicker (12.7mm) compared to the Slim drives (9.5mm).

Reference photo below (courtesy of fellow forum member rkawakami);


Top-- ultrabay slim (probably from a T40)
bottom-- standard IDE optical drive from an earlier Ultrabay 2000 device, which uses standard IDE drives + proprietary adapter shown below:



Note that the non-standard connector on the Ultrabay Slim (and by extension, Ultrabay Enhanced) is soldered directly to the drive's circuit board, and cannot be replaced. Which means there is no feasible way of converting a regular IDE optical drive to fit into Thinkpad with Ultrabay Enhanced drive bays.

[dances_with_woof]

The current DVD drive on my R61i is not ultrabay-slim as found on the T601 builds I've done. It's a chunky, standard ultrabay, as found on models going back to the R40.

I'll post pictures of the connector in the next day or so, which looks the same as the standard, generic UJ220. If there is a connector difference, it would certainly be interesting to see if a frankenstein mashup can be done to create a cheaper alternative to tracking down the exact FRU.

[TPFanatic]

If it doesn't work out due to a nonstandard connector axur-delmeria warns of, I would suggest a USB blu ray reader.

[dances_with_woof]

Non-sense, an external Blu-ray is total defeat after getting this R61 to max specs (15 inch standard model outfitted with a Boe Hydis HV150UX2 with a Real Black Stuff custom R61 ribbon connector, Middleton's BIOS, T9300 CPU, 8gb RAM). OEM FRU, hack, or bust.

I'll post pictures soon, I essentially have sold my entire vinyl record collection because I just enlarge album art on that big 15 inch screen while I'm listening to jams.

[TPFanatic]

Curious if this worked out a 4:3 R61 is on my list of novelty ThinkPads and knowing how far it can go would be neat. That said I've turned a laptop BD burner into a USB plug-in drive with one of those $7 adapters and it is working great.

[RealBlackStuff]

UJ220 Blueray drive has FRU 39T2853 and also 43N3200.
Original price when new: an eye-watering $849.-

https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ultrabay ... -ray_Drive
https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ ... NUS107-719

FYI:
The wide R61 HMM lists a bluray drive.
The 4:3 R61 does NOT list a bluray drive.

[ZaZ]

As I recall Blu ray playback was fairly poor on my R60e with T7400 and 3GB of memory, usually at or near 100% of CPU capacity due to all the copyright enforcement tech. Perhaps the newer CPU and 8GB of memory would help some, but stuttering and tearing during playback were not uncommon. If playing HD movies on a good screens is your goal you'd be better off ripping and re-encoding the movies. Re-encoding will be slow on a Santa Rosa CPU, hours, but CPU usage is around 25% during playback.

[wujstefan]

Hmm... I still should have some spare of those drives.

Maybe it would be a good thing to check. Middletoned R61 w/8gigs and a Penryn CPU ran smoothly as I recall.