First Toshiba with HD DVD and now Panasonic with Blu-Ray

By Matt Burns

Last week we brought you the first HD DVD drive for laptops from Toshiba and today, Panasonic's.
They are releasing these drives next spring and will be available in both notebook and 5 1/2" drive flavors; additionally, they will be able to write Blu-Ray disks at a 2 times speed. Plus, the drives will be able to read and write all CDs and normal DVDs as well.

The real news here is that Panasonic had to develop a non-cartridge Blu-Ray disk to work in their notebook drive. So that means Blu-Ray has moved from the plastic-thingy phase (technical term) to just the naked disk. Plus,
Panasonic plans on manufacturing the disks to be used in these drives in the 25 GB and 50 GB varieties which will both be available in
writable and re-writable formats.

 

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