Toshiba's slim HD DVD drive for thinner HD DVD laptops

Meet Toshiba's slim HD DVD optical drive for laptops. Perhaps already spotted in Samsung's M55, the SD-L902A measures a mere 12.7-millimeters in height and integrates a blue-violet laser that can read and write to HD DVD-R, access HD DVD-ROM media and act as a multi-drive to read and write to "all types" of standard DVD and CD discs. The drive includes an 8MB buffer with recording rates of 1x to HD DVD-R, 2x to DVD-R DL, 2.4x to DVD+R, 4x to DVD±R and DVD±RW, 3x to DVD-RAM, 16x to CD-R, and 10x to CD-RW. On display starting tomorrow at CEATEC Japan and shipping in "sample quantities" by the end of the year. Good news if you've ever been saddled with Toshiba's Qosmio fatty.

[Via Impress]

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2006 8:32AM]

WOW, packs alot, but i will wait for faster burning speed on DVD+R DL and DVD+R

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2006 8:35AM]

Isn't it kind of slow when writing to DVD and CD?
It's a first gen HD reader/writer, so 1x is expected for that, but 16x CD burning?!

[Paco Posted Oct 11th 2006 7:36AM]

Wow both 2.4x to DVD+R & 4x to DVD�R

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2006 9:14AM]

That's slim? ugh my optical drive bay is 9.5mm thick.

[DaveBG Posted Oct 2nd 2006 11:10AM]

Isnt this too slow?
16x CD-R
4x DVD-R

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2006 5:03PM]

I need a new 9.5mm optical drive for my MacBook because Apple decided to use a lousy drive that won't let me circumvent the stupid region code restrictions.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2006 6:03PM]

Wait......NO HDDVD-RW? wtf? and that thing sure is slow, I have a slim DVD burner in my notebook and it burns 16x dvd-r 4xDVD-RW 36x cd-r, it can't burn HD-DVD but wow, look at the sacrifice.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 31st 2007 12:41AM]

ok this is going to be an extremely dumb question, considering my knowledge on computer hardware is extremely limited. I have a toshiba satellite A105 series and i was wondering if there was any way to upgrade the laptop that i already have to run this drive as well as upgrade my video card so i could run hd movies,, my processor nor memory arent holding me back just my video card and lack of hd dvd drive. thanks