While IDE half-height DVD-ROM drives hit the market before they became available in laptops, it looks like the first HD DVD drive to debut in Europe will likely be Toshiba's HD DVD-equipped laptop, the Qosmio G30. Toshiba confirms that its built-in HD DVD drive does not check for region coding, thus allowing HD DVD discs bought outside of Europe to be played, such as the HD DVD titles that are expected to launch in the US near the end of this month.
The reason for the lack of region support is due to early HD DVD releases being mostly back-catalogue movies, which the studios are not so concerned about release dates across different regions. However, once new releases start coming out on HD DVD, this may change, which could lead to region enforcement in later HD DVD drives.
The G30 features a 1920 x 1200 TruBrite display, which is capable of displaying 1080p HD content at its native resolution. It runs on a 2GHz Core Duo T2500 CPU, 1GB DDR2 RAM and an nVidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics adaptor. Other features include twin analogue / digital TV tuners and Dolby Home Theatre-certified audio. It is not clear which operating system it will ship with or whether the optical drive can write to HD DVD media. The Qosmio G30 is expected to retail for between €2,500 and €3,500. Thanks to both D4rk0n3 and Hypnosis4U2NV for letting us know about the following news:
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The debut of pre-recorded HD DVD media looks set to be a low-key affair, however. Toshiba confirmed the G30's built-in HD DVD drive will not check for region encoding, allowing it to play HD DVDs bought in the US and elsewhere, company officials said. |
With such a high price tag, I cannot see these flying off
the shelves that quickly! :p However, it is interesting to see that the
first HD DVD drive in Europe will be a laptop version. Then again, as a
laptop is effectively a complete PC, there is no worry about the monitor or
graphics card not being HDCP compliant (unless one tries replacing their
internal optical drive with a HD DVD drive), unlike installing an IDE HD DVD
drive in an existing PC or buying a new PC system with a HD DVD drive without a
monitor. With HD DVD's launch date very near now, unfortunately it is
quite clear that consumers will be expected to ditch their perfectly good
monitor for a HDCP compliant display and likely have to replace their graphics card if they plan on installing a HD DVD drive to watch HD DVD movies.
Feel free to discuss about HD DVD on our Satellite, HD-TV, Blu-ray and HD-DVD Forum.
Source: Reg Hardware
