yes very nice design but overly priced,

Congrats bro~~~. you got a nice studio Hybrid !!!! not a normal regular desktop but it's combination of notebook&dekstop concept so called Hybrid ( I guess... )
Mind to share your new studio spec?

I guess you have also ordered with Blu-ray drive. hereby also wanna answer your question. [ at the same time also clear blindbox 'doubt ]
system come with blu-ray drive ordered will with come with together Blu-ray acceleration Decoder card installed too.
if you dare to tear down your new system, you will see the actual card look like:
the steps can refer: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/syst...s.htm#wp1180146

p/s: RM2k without monitor coz blu-ray drive still expensive I guess.....

Thanks for the clarification. About x3100, can it handle h.264 1080p decoding though? You know... anime fans(me included) .

can lah.. proble only comes when doing full bluray HD.. those 25gb a moive kind.

Hybrid Studio can handle bluray with an accelerator (hardware) that comes with the bluray drive.

is it?got such thing?

After more than 2 years if using my Studio Hybrid, its harddisk just refuse to booth with an error at bios showing no harddisk detected. I guess the harddisk has died.

It's late to call Dell now. But I'm wondering if I could change the harddisk myself. Any advice?