Are all PS3 Blu-Ray Drives Interchangeable?

Is it possible to mod a PS3 to play MKV files and to use NTFS formatted external drives?

• I currently own one of the original 60GB PS3 running firmware 3.15 but have upgraded the hard drive by replacing the 60GB HDD with a 500GB HDD. I am interested in possibly jail breaking my Playstation but don't really get the process. From what I've been able to find there are multiple different software versions to jailbreak a PS3, some of which requiring you to buy a USB dongle, but I don't really get the differences between the versions. What is the best PS3 mod or jail break for my needs? I don't use my PS3 for gaming at all, I don't own a single game so being able to play pirated games isn't a big deal for me. The main thing I do use my PS3 for is a media center: I have several external drives full of videos and music totalling several Terabytes. Out of the box the PS3 has been great for this but I have a couple major issues I need to fix. First the PS3 normally can't play MKV files, which is quickly becoming the standard for HD movies. Secondly, with increasing quality in HD movies the sizes are becoming bigger and bigger, as far as I'm aware the PS3 out-of box only supports FAT32 external USB drives, which has a maximum file size of 4GB, which is smaller than many videos I would like to play. Being able to use a NTFS external USB-drive should solve this issue. These are my main 2 areas in which I would like to hopefully improve my PS3, although if there are other media features which jailbreaks can add this would be fantastic. If anyone knows of a way to add these features your help would be amazing. Thank you for the help

• Answer:

  Supposedly there's homebrew that can do it but you can only read NTFS drives. Writing to them isn't something that's really possible, nor are the developers working on supporting it.