NEC's HR-1100A white-label HD-DVD
Early adopters, start your engines. NEC certainly didn't drag their feet in releasing a counter to Pioneer's BRD-101A, the first consumer PC next-gen optical drive we saw earlier this week. But NEC's new HR-1100A is a 2x HD-DVD drive (remember, HD-DVD / Blu-ray are very high bitrate, and 2x here is not equivalent to 2x DVD, just as it is not equivalent to 2x CD) dual-layer drive that can read dual-sided discs that can theoretically fit 64GB. Don't forget the real bonus here though—this drive has a blue laser pickup (oh, the irony) that reads DVDs and CDs, unlike the Pioneer which only has a dual laser system capable of reading Blu-ray and DVD discs. It's kind of funny watching these companies pick their side; let the format wars begin, uh, again!
[Via I4U]
