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Toshiba To Offer Laptops With HD-DVD in 2005

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-about-the-sound dept.

LBArrettAnderson writes "Toshiba will release laptops with HD-DVD under its high-end Qosmio brand and plans to ship one million units in the first year to Europe, the U.S. and China, as well as Japan. The company claims the slimline HD-DVD format is more suitable to laptop PCs than the rival Blu-ray Disc format."

8 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Better suited for laptops? by megalomang · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You mean heavily invested in HD-DVD? The answer is most definitely yes. They would not be on the steering committee without a vested interest in the format. The early release is clearly an attempt to advance the HD-DVD market penetration.

    Reasons why HD-DVD could be better suited for a laptop (I don't know which apply though):

    consumes less power

    is less susceptible to vibration

    smaller form factor

    less heat dissipated (either due to disc rpm or embedded processing)

  2. Re:One question though.. by mcg1969 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You will need a new player to play HD-DVDs. However, you will be able to play old DVDs on these new players.

    The DRM will indeed be stronger. The "AACS" system is being considered for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Over at AVS Forum we've been talking about these formats a lot, with input an industry rep on the Blu-Ray side. The DRM will not prevent good old-fashoned "insert and hit play", but it will prevent uncontrolled ripping and copying. It remains to be seen if they will support media servers and other applications but AACS does provide that capability.

  3. Two main differences. by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    The differences are greater than between DVD+/-RW. HD-DVD is easier for manufacturers, because the production process is simular to DVD.

    Blue-ray on the other hand has larger capacities. This is important as some experts think that fitting a HD (1080i or 720p) movie onto HD-DVD will be a tight squeeze so there will be no room for special features, and higher compression than desired may be required :(

    Building players that can handle DVD will be equally easy for both formats. I don't know about a single player that could do both HD-DVD and Blue-ray.

  4. Them and who else? by Pete+Brubaker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Take a look at the Blu-Ray website. I think the only company that's missing in the industry partner list is Toshiba. Plus after reading some documentation internal to my company regarding manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray discs they are cheaper to make than HD-DVD's in both cost per disc and cost per gigabyte.

    In the past we've seen products like the Beta format for example that have a small industry following just go by the wayside. It seems such that HD-DVD is progressing along the same path. Time will tell I guess.

    --
    What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
  5. Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD by disbaldman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Although Blu-Ray may hold more information (25GB/layer * 2 layers = 50GB vs 15GB * 2 layers = /30GB for HD-DVD), I personally am sick of Sony trying to push their proprietary standards out again. They do have a large backing for Blu-Ray, but if you take a look back at their other (and more expensive) dead-end proprietary products--namely Mini-Discs and Memory Sticks, I wouldn't count HD-DVD out just yet...

  6. Re:Will it be Linux burn-compatible? by erikharrison · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're probably using Xcdroast, yes? That requires dvdrecord-pro, a binary only product from the same guy who makes the GPL cdrecord. dvdrecord is free for personal use, but requires a special key to run in free mode. A couple of Google look ups and you'll be burning in no time.

    Unless you're opposed to it's nature as binary only. In which case you can use Nautilus's built in DVD recording abilities, which use growisofs, which is GPL.

  7. Oh really? by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The DRM will not prevent good old-fashoned "insert and hit play", but it will prevent uncontrolled ripping and copying.

    ...for the first couple of months, you mean.

    I really wonder why they even bother. Unless they include hardware DRM to disallow access to all unauthorized programs, this WILL be cracked. And either one does do such a thing, the other one will almost assuredly win the format wars.

    My message to MPAA is this: Save your money. Leave it unencrypted. Let us do what we want with our movies. The VCR did not put you out of business, and neither will this.

  8. Re:One question though.. by mcg1969 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Even the CD DRM that prevents it from being played at all on computers, DVD players and older CD players.

    There's a big difference here: copy protection is not built into the CD standard, so any copy protection system necessarily violates the standard. In this case, copy protection will be built into the standard, so all players will support it.

    Having said that, I have no doubt that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both will be far less flexible than CD or DVD in playback due to the protection schemes employed. Ironically, Microsoft's presence in these format discussions will work in our favor here. They are certainly going to work towards PC-compatible playback, and whatever they enable will be enabled in Linux as well by the nature of the standard.