Toshiba unveils HD DVD-RW writer for laptops

Toshiba Qosmio fans have reason to celebrate with the unveiling of Tosh's skinny SD-L912A HD DVD-RW writer for laptops, a world's first to support rewritable HD DVD media. Unfortunately, we're only talking 1x read/write speeds here, or about 2 hours to fill a 30GB dual-layer disc -- but it's a start. The drives is also capable of writing to HD DVD-R DL and all the DVD and CDROM formats you can throw at it. The 12.7-mm thin drive will be shipping in sample quantities to OEMs in July as they spin up to production capacity in the months that follow. That would make it available as an option in the Qosmio G40 sometime near the end of summer.

[Via Impress]

[Dinraj Pradeep @ Jun 4th 2007 7:30AM]

Why can they make it slot-loading? Im sick of these trays. It so ugly and cumbersome.

[Karl Viklund @ Jun 4th 2007 9:40AM]

No it's not.

[Totalfixation @ Jun 4th 2007 7:44AM]

im not sure but it could be because slot loading has a slightly higher fail rate? not sure but can anyone verify it? what sucks is, if one was to get this, for other brands of laptop it would be hard to find a bezel replacement for it.

[Andir3.0 @ Jun 4th 2007 8:22AM]

I think it has to do more with the mechanic space required for slot load. The reliability has been up for many years on slot loading drives. The mechanisms required to make a slot loading drive this thin would also be prone to breaking or wearing out faster, not to mention the cost would be prohibitive.

[Aaron @ Jun 4th 2007 7:51AM]

and the expected price tag is?

[Kamokazi @ Jun 4th 2007 8:21AM]

Somewhere between eleventy billion and $Texas.

[Paul @ Jun 4th 2007 8:13AM]

the hd dvd is dead blu ray is the way to go

[pigfister @ Jun 4th 2007 8:15AM]

1x 2x pathetic speeds coupled to over priced media = fuk off keep your crap as i can easily burn 24 dvd's in 2 hours wow that over 100 gigs in the same time and since 50x dvd spindles are less than £10 its a real no brainer!

[pigfister @ Jun 4th 2007 8:19AM]

@ Paul

blu-ray is drm hell controlled by the mapp, aacs la.

bodies pushing DRM to the world, now cross reference the companies behind DRM.

MPAA:
Sony Pictures, Buena Vista (The Walt Disney Company), Paramount Pictures (Viacom -- which bought DreamWorks in February 2006), 20th Century Fox , Universal Studios , and Warner Bros. (Time Warner)

AACS LA:
Sony, Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers, IBM and Toshiba.

RIAA:
Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group.

Blu-ray Disc Association:
Sony, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung.

[DorianGray @ Jun 4th 2007 8:27AM]

...available sometime in Febtober...

[Richard Lai @ Jun 4th 2007 8:50AM]

"we're only talking 1x read/write speeds here, or about 2 hours to fill a 30GB dual-layer disc -- but it's a start"

Still good for movies, I guess? For now though backups stay on hard drive, or SSD if they lower the price tag.

[Tyk @ Jun 4th 2007 9:17AM]

HD-DVD is only 3x more capacity than a DVD9 and takes 100x longer to write on media thats 50x more expensive.. lame.. why anyone PC owner would choose this over BD is lame.

[Karl Viklund @ Jun 4th 2007 9:40AM]

Bad bad bad... We want Blu-Ray not this...

[Moff @ Jun 4th 2007 9:58AM]

What is the deal with wanting to store so much on one disc? I lost interest past dvd. I still have a hard time finding enough crud to fit on a cdrom.

Unless you are downloading a lot of illegal movies? And even then, dvd's are cheap and fast.

I don't want a blu-ray or hd-dvd burner. Just doesn't make sense.

Streaming movies from your computer is the way to go. And get an external HD if you wish to back up 20+ gig.

Geez...

[Slvrgun @ Jun 4th 2007 12:17PM]

What if you want to let your friend 10 miles away borrow one of your movies. Are you going to give him a hard drive and tell him to plug it in their computer, then stream the content to their TV in the living room.

[Andir3.0 @ Jun 4th 2007 3:54PM]

"Cheap" computer backups. I don't know about you, but I have way more than 9G of data on my PC that I'd like to make a regular backup of.

[Amazing Rando @ Aug 25th 2007 8:25PM]

>>And get an external HD if you wish to back up 20+ gig.

only end users would call a hard drive a 'backup'. A hard drive is nothing of the sort and is prone to any number of problems at any time, even while sitting on a shelf inactive.

I will admit that a 1-2x drive has no real appeal, but DVD-RW drives started out the same, and I remember my first CD writer too - a 4x Yamaha SCSI CD-RW.

[Slvrgun @ Jun 4th 2007 12:14PM]

Can someone tell me with a straight face if either HD DVD or Blu-ray is winning. I mean damn, why can we not just have one damn format for god's sake.

[Moff @ Jun 4th 2007 12:55PM]

Let me get this straight.. You are going to burn an HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray) for a friend that lives 10 miles away? First you would have to decrypt it (takes forever) and then buy some expensive media just to burn it to.

I'd get that friend a Gift Certificate and tell him to buy his own movies (or just let him borrow it.)


I still stand by my point that it is worthless to want to burn that much data on a regular basis.

[pigfister @ Jun 4th 2007 12:33PM]

@ Slvrgun

neither are winning, hd sales account for less than 3% of movie sales. dvd is winning and will continue for the next few years.

dvd releases sell around 14 million in the first week where as hd can barely manage 30,000 in a month.

[Slvrgun @ Jun 4th 2007 12:36PM]

Ok well there is nothing like watching a movie in HD or a beautiful HDTV, so with that in mind, which is the better option and which one looks like it will eventually win? Should I pick up the Xbox 360 HD DVD or just buy a Blu Ray player when the prices drop?

[Chris K. @ Jun 4th 2007 2:42PM]

You may not have a reason for burning that much data on a regular basis, but what about those of us that want to burn a backup of our hard drives? 3-4 disks 50 gigs on a Bluray/HD DVD disc for a complete hdd backup is much better than the tens of discs is would take to back up the same amount of data on a DVD.

[Moff @ Jun 4th 2007 4:04PM]

Where did you get "Cheap" from? This is not cheap or fast.

At $50/disc (bluray RW) for 50GB ($1/GB)
I found a HD DVD-RW for $34.98 for 15GB ($2/GB)
HD-DVD-R - Single Write for $10-20 ($1.5/GB)

External 250 GB Hard Drive (about .35/GB):
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10005012&ps=ho4

Again.. I still don't see the point of using HD-DVD or Blu-Ray for backups or anything. Not to mention the crappy speed to backup at.

[Andir3.0 @ Jun 4th 2007 4:09PM]

Prices go down over time. Look at how expensive CD burning was when it first came out. DVD as well. Those of you that look at today and not beyond make me sad for those that develop technology.

There's also the fact that you can't drop a hard drive for the most part or you risk damaging it way more than a plastic disk. Not to mention archival storage. Keeping a library of backups on hard disk takes up about 100x the space of a small optical disk. Give it time and the cost will come down.

[Smoke_Dawg_187 @ Jun 4th 2007 5:55PM]

The cost of flash based memory continues to drop as well. That would seem to be the better alternative than Blu-Ray. You also have to consider that not many people even have a Blu-ray player, let alone a drive for their PC. On the other hand most every PC has USB 2.0.

[Smoke_Dawg_187 @ Jun 4th 2007 5:55PM]

@ Moff
I totally agree with you.

[tekdroid @ Jun 5th 2007 8:23AM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#Digital_rights_management