I guess my first question is, does anyone else have this?

I received mine today and have played with it for a few hours. If you're not aware, this is desktop-replacement laptop with a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1GB RAM, and a pair of 100GB drives. It also includes a 1920x1200 17" 16:10 screen. And of particular note to this forum, it includes a HD-DVD ROM drive, software for HD-DVD playback and a HDMI output.

Initial impressions are great - even phenomenal. For a 17" notebook, I have no complaints. Performance is blazing fast... I think this only gives up gaming video performance to the Inspiron XPS from Dell, otherwise it's more or less on par with the fastest portable PCs you can buy today. The screen stands out. It's the best 1920x1200 screen I've ever used. I'm typing this on it now. Blacks are black, whites are white, nary a dead pixel, great uniformity and color appears to be very good. This is an amazing display. Ergonomics are a little less spectacular - the keyboard is OK but could be a bit bigger given the size of this thing. And it is a 10lb beast, not terribly portable. It gets warm, too. Be warned. On-board sound is great, perhaps the best I've heard in a laptop. (Just like the screen.)

OK, on to HDDVD - I only have Serenity. When putting the disk in the drive, it takes about 20-30 seconds to load before video starts playing. Not too bad, and I gather it to be a little faster than perhaps the A1 player? The software is "WinDVD HD for Toshiba" - I know little about it except that it appears to be a separate executable from the standard WinDVD that's also included. Video quality... well, it's what you would expect! Ridiculously good. I feel like I'm seeing every piece of detail I'd ever want to see in a movie. The format makes good use of the panel. I don't know if I'm seeing 1080i or 1080p or what. Not sure how to tell. CPU on both cores runs around 90% according to task manager, during playback. We watched Serenity end-to-end and there maybe was a stutter or two, not noticable at all. Hopefully future refinements to the software will bring down CPU consumption a bit & give the notebook a little more headroom to work with.

I have a Sanyo PLV-Z4 and will give HDMI output a shot, tomorrow. In the meantime I did want to say that my initial impressions are positive. This is an expensive device, for sure, but it's full-featured to the extreme, and HD-DVD playback is a nice bonus on the side.

Feel free to post any questions and I'll do my best to answer, though bear in mind that I'm not the most experienced person about this stuff....

HD-DVD Laptop drives are 1080p. Glad to know they're shipping the new Qosmio's

Is the Qosmio G35-AV650 Made in China or Made in Japan?

I guess my first question is, does anyone else have this?
Feel free to post any questions and I'll do my best to answer, though bear in mind that I'm not the most experienced person about this stuff....
Hello, how about noise during playback i.e. HD DVD drive hard disk, fan etc..
Thanks

Is the Qosmio G35-AV650 Made in China or Made in Japan?

Mine says "Made in Japan" on the bottom.

Hello, how about noise during playback i.e. HD DVD drive hard disk, fan etc..
Thanks

Very quiet--this is a strength. The laptop does have an on-board fan that does kick in and make sound, however I've only been able to get it to kick in when playing games that stretch the GeForce Go 7600 card. The optical drive does make seeking sounds during disk insertion (for ~ 10 seconds) that sounds a lot like the old 3.5" floppy drives, however during playback the drive is quiet - I can't hear it from more than 3-4 feet away, and that's in a silent room. Likewise the hard drives are also silent--I haven't heard them at all. I should also add that the laptop came with some Toshiba utility to set the HD-DVD drive in "normal" versus "acoustically silent for playback of media" mode. I have it on "normal" -- it may be even quieter with in the other mode.

More feedback:

This screen is extremely sensitive. I see a whole lot of what seems like digital noise in Serenity, single pixel at 1920x1200. At full screen, it's not too distracting past a few feet but it's noticable. A friend said that he was pretty sure this was film grain rather than a format or codec issue. A few of the pure CGI scenes lacked this extremely high frequency noise, so we tend to believe that the HDDVD format indeed can replicate film grain.

This noise can't be seen at all on my Sanyo PLV-Z4. Output was via HDMI. Yes, I fed a projector HDMI from a laptop! What can I say. It worked, and beautifully. It sends out 1080i (don't think it's 1080p, not that the Sanyo would accept that?) but there weren't any weird handshake or other issues. It worked, and worked well. The video quality was phenomenal. It's the best I've ever see, and a leap beyond the HD HBO and Showtime that we watch from digital cable. Unbelievable! I wish I had more titles.

Intervideo WinDVD HD has some issues. Mouse navigation of all the menus doesn't work that well. For example I haven't been able to get to the special features section using the touchpad, for example--those menus are just unresponsive. Occasionally navigation just stops working altogether and I have to restart WinDVD HD. It definitely feels a little unfinished.

Though by default, in WinDVD HD you can turn on hardware acceleration. Do so! In my first post I mentioned each core running at 90%++ with occasional stutter. With HW support turned on, the stuttering effectively disappeared. Chapter navigation is fast and fluid. I can now have HDDVD running in a window while doing other things! Occasionally other software likes to freeze while WinDVD is playing HD content. Again, I take this to be about bugs in either Windows or WinDVD support.

On Day 2, my impressions have grown very positive. This is a screaming fast laptop that actually does play HD-DVD movies well. And as I figure out some of the things, the downsides continue to decrease.

sphinx,

Could you check Windows Device Manager and let us know what model HD-DVD drive is being used in the laptop?

Interesting,
I remember when I got my first DVD enabled laptop in 1997, DVD playback required most of the machines power. It worked great in the beginning, but once software was installed over time, DVD playback started to fail (services and background programs taking up resources). My 1.7 GHz DELL 1920x1200 inspiron was also capable of playing Windows Media at full resolution in the beginning, but now forget it !. The hardware accelleration seems to offload your CPUs - thats great - hope it keeps working for you. Keep posting over the next weeks please.

sphinx,

How does the HDMI output work. If your not watching an HD-DVD do you have your Windows desktop as normal?

The reason I ask is, as it's a PC I'm sure it must do 1080p and treat the HDMI as if it was a regular Digital output like DVI. Have you tried 720p instead of 1080i when connected to your PJ? I'd expect it to look better since the PJ doesn't have to scale it a second time.

Thanks

sphinx,

Could you check Windows Device Manager and let us know what model HD-DVD drive is being used in the laptop?

TOSHIBA DVDW/HD TS-L802A

Interesting,
I remember when I got my first DVD enabled laptop in 1997, DVD playback required most of the machines power. It worked great in the beginning, but once software was installed over time, DVD playback started to fail (services and background programs taking up resources). My 1.7 GHz DELL 1920x1200 inspiron was also capable of playing Windows Media at full resolution in the beginning, but now forget it !. The hardware accelleration seems to offload your CPUs - thats great - hope it keeps working for you. Keep posting over the next weeks please.

The out-of-box configuration is filled with background processes. There are a wide variety of Toshiba utilities, some Office Trial stuff, McAfee and some stuff I'd never heard of. As I disable things, I'm finding it running smoother and smoother. I'd say that the hardware can playback HDDVD (at least the 24mbit Serenity disk) to 1920x1200 with maybe 20% headroom to spare with the current software. That's not too bad, I guess.

I'll be reinstalling everything tomorrow and should have a better idea.

I had a Dell Latitude D800 (I think a similar 1.7GHz Centrino to yours?) which could play WMVHD 720p clips ok but tended to struggle (sometimes badly) with 1080p. The Toshiba has absolutely no problem with WMVHD 1080p... I think CPU utilization on either core never got past 30%!

Mmph, did you special-order your HD-DVD Toshiba unit? I googled the laptop's model and I got a link to this: http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4107624. The resolution is capped at 1440X900, there's no mention of an HDMI output and HD-DVD compatibility isn't mentioned (??!!).

Some places seem to have messed up specs. The AV600 and AV650 models end up getting their specs changed a bit. The AV600 is the one with the lower res screen. The AV650 adds to it,
- 1920x1200 screen
- HD-DVD ROM
- 2x100GB disks instead of 2x80GB
- T2500 core duo instead of T2400 core duo
- HDMI outupt
- maybe some other stuff, not sure

Check Toshiba for the correct info. Also, I think some Circuit City stores may be stocking this in your area now, check it out.

Whether that's worth the $800 premium (give or take) is up to you! I do notice that the AV650 screen may not be quite as good as the AV600 one. The black levels on this screen are good, but not great...

After about a week, I'm delighted at this laptop. I've gotten a few more HDDVD titles (e.g. Chronicles of Riddick) and continue to be amazed at the PQ. I am having a hard time getting information about this laptop, though. I've read that the panel is rendering native 1080p off the disc but 1080i out the HDMI output, but I can't confirm; my projector is a 720p LCD.

WinDVD HD is buggy. It has trouble with a variety of Serenity menus. Riddick was better. However, I did use the Toshiba A1 player matched up against the Qosmio and we actually agreed that the laptop is the better player - it starts up faster, loads disks faster, is somewhat quieter. We also felt that the chances of getting upgrades / support on the Qosmio are waaaay better than the A1, owing to it being a basically a MCE computer running easily upgradable all-commodity software. Of course, it costs about 6 times as much as the A1 player... big downside.

After using the A1, I do prefer the G35-AV650 as the top HDDVD playback device at this time... it really can do it all!

sphinx99,
Can you verify the HDMI output options from the laptop? Does it let you do 480p, 720p, 1080i, and most importantly, 1080p?

I'm also curious to see how it handles enhanced iHD features like PIP from Constantine and Bourne Supremacy.

Hi,

I read from other sites that someone said its performance could be seriously affected if doing multitasking.

I am really thinking of buying this laptop when I study in graduate school. Thanks.

Has anyone tested to access the HD DVD titles file System on The Qosmio to look into the disc and see how is it made? File extensions etc. I saw a post about Vista and it seems it cannot access the HD-DVD file system. What about win XP? And what about Win DVD ? how can it play HD DVD movies if the Operating system cannot access the file system? Thank you

JaPhule - I only have been able to get 1080i output (so far) from HDMI. There is no support for most iHD features at this time. As far as I can tell, this functionality is simply not implemented in WinDVD HD at this time... that could change with a future release.

wuwoze - HDDVD playback definitely can be affected if you're playing a disc at the same time you're doing a bunch of other stuff. I've gotten CPU util % down to about 80% plus or minus a few, during playback.

cine - you definitely can view the contents of discs in Windows Explorer (nice 10+GB files!) but there's nothing I can do with them.

I've gotten a few more discs and playback has been flawless so far. Every issue I've run into was WinDVD related so I do believe this is a pretty good platform for HD-DVD playback on a PC. It's also a blindingly fast laptop with a fantastic 17" screen...

can't believe i missed this thread!

congrats on the new toy and thanks for posting your impressions/experiences.

i'm thinking of picking one up but i still have my hp zd8060us that i bought about a year and a half ago and after a few months of lugging that beast around i had sworn that the next lappy would be very portable with a long battery life...the battery on my hp lasts about an hour!

how is battery life on the 650? can you install a second battery? can you play through an entire hd dvd on a fully charged battery? does playback performance suffer at all when on battery?

when you play back on your laptop screen, does it scale the image to the panel res of 1920x1200? is there a setting to not have it scale but instead just show the native 1080 letterboxed? i wonder if the high freq noise you reported was a result of the scaling?

it is a shame it won't output 1080p over hdmi...is it a video card limitation, hdmi limitatio, etc. or might it do 1080p at some point with a video card/hdmi driver update...hmmm

Battery life (with some of the savings gizmos turned on) is JUST BARELY ENOUGH to get through a full movie like Serenity on a single charge. I'd say it's about 90 minutes with screen, processor, wifi, etc. cranked to maximum. If you throttle down the screen brightness a bit, I think you can get away with a movie, but just barely. Playback actually works OK on battery. The only difference is that when plugged into AC, I suspect that one of the dual backlights (LED?) is kept off to save battery. Basically you can't run the screen at its max brightness unless you are plugged into AC. But it's not bad on battery.

I get more than an hour of battery, that's for sure. The laptop comes with only one battery and only space for one, so you can't swap batteries w/o powering down the laptop.

My impression is that there is no scaling going on when watching HD-DVD. I *thought* HD-DVD 2.35:1 content is something like 1920x800 or so, and it appears to be displayed as such... this is a 16:10 screen so there's a lot of blank space above and below the video. I truly believe (now) that the hi freq noise is either film grain or camera noise. It very nearly is single-pixel noise, which is why it's not noticeable from more than a couple of feet away.

I have no idea why no 1080p out of HDMI and I sure get the sense that nobody really knows. One big thing I'm still trying to understand is whether the laptop is sending 1080p video data (from HD-DVD) to the native panel.

I have no idea why no 1080p out of HDMI and I sure get the sense that nobody really knows. One big thing I'm still trying to understand is whether the laptop is sending 1080p video data (from HD-DVD) to the native panel.

How does the HDMI output work? Does the display properties allow you to enable hdmi output at certain resolutions like 480p, 720p, and 1080i? Is it a simple enable/disable hdmi output? If so there's no 1080p option correct? Also, is the hdmi output, showing the whole pc desktop or limited to hd dvd video output only?

As for the native panel, the video card should be sending out 1920x1200 to your panel with the windvd hd software doing the actual output of the video, which I would assume is 1080p when in full screen mode.

Another review:-

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,126003,00.asp

sphinx had already confirmed:-

Another drawback: Like Toshiba's HD-A1 and HD-XA1 HD DVD players, this notebook outputs video over HDMI only at 1080i, a disappointment considering that Hollywood studios are starting to encode their discs at 1080p resolution.

I'm really disapointed in this. What is it with Toshiba and their insistence on not doing 1080p, don't they realise they're losing sales because of it. I paid for mine yesterday (regretting a little now) and will be collecting next Wednesday/Thursday. I'll be hooking up to a Sony HS50 via a Denon 4306 and will test it on my neighbours' X series 46" 1080p LCD too. If it's lacking in the audio through HDMI too then I'm going to consider trying to get my money back, unless I'm blown away with the PQ of course :D

Another review:-

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,126003,00.asp

sphinx had already confirmed:-

I'm really disapointed in this. What is it with Toshiba and their insistence on not doing 1080p, don't they realise they're losing sales because of it. I paid for mine yesterday (regretting a little now) and will be collecting next Wednesday/Thursday. I'll be hooking up to a Sony HS50 via a Denon 4306 and will test it on my neighbours' X series 46" 1080p LCD too. If it's lacking in the audio through HDMI too then I'm going to consider trying to get my money back, unless I'm blown away with the PQ of course :D

I doubt they are losing sales from it. Any quality 1080p display is going to upscale to the highest resolution. If the original content is in progressive format proper de-interlacing and scaling should result in a picture identical to a native 1080p input.

Now keep in mind your projector isn't a 1080 projector native so the limiting factor is going to be its resolution and not the HD DVD player. Tweak your seting and you'll get an idea for what looks best.

hmurchison,

I disagree. I think a lot of people are hung up on the 1080p thing and I think a lot more Blu-ray fan boys would have considered 1st Gen HD-DVD if Toshiba had done 1080p straight off. I believe many of the average Joe's will believe the same Blu-ray hype about HD-DVD being inferior due to only having 1080i. Those of us that know about inverse telecine in the display are in the minority.

I'm perfectly aware that I'm limited to 720p or 540>720 from 1080i, but I expect to upgrade to a 1080p panel in the not too distant future. For me 1080p is more important for the PC desktop aspect. I've not seen 1080i from a PC onto a Full HD screen yet but don't expect it to be as clear as 1080p. Everybody strives for 1:1 pixel mapping from their PC's, I'm no different. But from what I've read about the Tosh laptop wont even do 720p on HDMI.

I'll give a full report on all the unanswered Q's next week. Like I said below, I also have the oportunity to hook it up to a true 1080p input, full HD LCD. If the 1080i from my laptop matches 1080p from my mates HTPC on his X-Series, then I wont be too bothered about the 1080i issue.

The disapointment really for me comes down to the spec of the machine. The HDMI transmitter used in the tosh is full blown HD video and HD Audio capable.

Regards

Forest Fan, I definitely look forward to hearing your experience comparing HDMI output to a 1080 display to what's seen on the LCD. I'm still not sure (either way) whether I'm seeing 1080i or 1080p on the laptop's 17" LCD. I can't see a reason why it wouldn't be 1080p.

I don't think 1080i/p will matter much to the average Joe; put me in the camp that believes this war will be won or lost on the basis of price and titles alone.

I can't get the 650 to do 720p which is a real disappointment! My projector (Sanyo Z4) is 720p...

computer displays are all progressive so if the windvd program is displaying to the panel directly i can't see it not maintaining the source which is encoded at 1080p unless there is something wonky going on with windvd; maybe a read of their website will provide some detail or shoot them an email.

now if the windvd program has to go through the video card, i'm not sure what would be transpiring in that case.

I disagree. I think a lot of people are hung up on the 1080p thing and I think a lot more Blu-ray fan boys would have considered 1st Gen HD-DVD if Toshiba had done 1080p straight off. I believe many of the average Joe's will believe the same Blu-ray hype about HD-DVD being inferior due to only having 1080i. Those of us that know about inverse telecine in the display are in the minority.

Clearly there is potential for fud created at 1080p level by br group. Either Toshiba thinks that is not significant or they think they can effectively combat it.

As far as J6P is concerned most of them don't have 1080p TVs - nor will they buy a $1000 BD player.

We should remember that less than 10% of HDTVs sold will be RPTVs and a small portion of them will be 1080p. Most HDTVs will be flat panels and there 1080p at affordable prices is atleast 3 to 5 years away.

computer displays are all progressive so if the windvd program is displaying to the panel directly i can't see it not maintaining the source which is encoded at 1080p unless there is something wonky going on with windvd; maybe a read of their website will provide some detail or shoot them an email.

now if the windvd program has to go through the video card, i'm not sure what would be transpiring in that case.

Well, I'm pretty sure this is not going to the panel "directly" as in bypassing the OS, etc. The WinDVD HD window is just like any other media player, I can resize it, move it around my desktop, and so forth. I agree with you that if the source is 1080p it seems very weird to me that the panel would not be displaying that full 1080p source. IF that's the case, then us laptop owners are among the first to really enjoy the full 1080p experience :) I guess the big question is, where does the 1080p-->1080i conversion take place? In software in the HDDVD decoder? Or in electronics associated with the HDMI output? Or somewhere else?

Sphinx,

The LCD display on the laptop is definately progressive, its doing 1920x1200p. An HD-DVD will not be 1080i on the laptops' display, this is confirmed by Tosh. It will have the full 1080p 1:1 pixel mapped on the laptop's LCD with an extra 60 pixels above and below as it's an 16:10 panel.

The issue I have is with the available resolutions on the HDMI out. PC's and graphics cards have been able to output > 1080p over DVI for years now and have always been natively progressive. So given the tosh has the brand spanking new Nvidia GeForce 7600 Go and the Silicon Image 1930 HDMI transmitter, I'm just don't understand why they've handicapped it to 1080i :-


Sil1930:-
http://www.siliconimage.com/news/press/detailpressrelease.aspx?id=363
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=53&ptid=1

Maximum Resolution: UXGA or 1080p

GeForce 7600 Go:-
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/go_7_series_techspecs.html

Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
Dual DVO ports for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders

I think I read that the Sony Vaio blu-ray laptops will use both the same Graphics card and HDMI transmitter but will do 720p, 1080i and 1080p out through it's HDMI port.

Great, I can tell my grandchildren that I was among the very first to see 1080p native with the new formats, and it only cost me, uh, $3,000. :)

I agree, the HDMI output seems crippled. I wonder if it'll get fixed. I personally haven't felt quite as much a fuss about it because my projector is 1280x720. But it is frustrating. So the Qosmio gets you a taste of 1080p, but you have to give up 720p. Or you can get the A1 and 720p, but you lose out on 1080p.

Well, the A1 is cheaper.

Hi

can someone please confirm if 1080i or 720p output over a VGA connector to a projector is possible? I have one of these laptops coming on Monday and a couple of hd dvds to test on it but my projector has no hdmi just svideo, sRGB over 15 pin vga.

Thanks!

Sold5

I've not been able to get HD-DVD output over VGA.

Thanks for the info, it looks like I'll have to get a sanyo z4 `so to watch riddick. Oh well...

That's what I have (same projector) and am completely delighted by the picture quality. It's a fair sight better than anything I've seen before.

Hmmm... I remember reading about someone who ripped the HD-DVD rom from their A1 and tried to hook it up to a computer. It worked and was recognized by Windows but it couldn't play HD-DVDs. I'm not sure if it was resolved but they thought it was simply a matter of software support.

I wonder if you took that drive, put it in an external USB case and hooked it up to the Qosmio if you could play movies using WinDVD? Are you interested in voiding your warranty sphinx99? :D
-Matt

Haha :)

I can confirm that the Qosmio does in fact deliver both 720p and 1080i over HDMI without issues. I'm currently running 1920x1080 on my desktop to my FP over HDMI, and the projector says its getting 1080i :) Change desktop resolution to 1280x720 and the projector says 720p. 1:1 pixel mapping out of the box. I'm very pleased and apologize for reporting earlier that it couldn't be done.

I prefer sending 720p to my 720p projector; whatever is going the scaling (could be WinDVD HD, or DirectX, or something else) is doing a better job than my projector does. 720p from the Qosmio to a 720p projector is *fantastic* - pixel-level detail.

Hmmm... I remember reading about someone who ripped the HD-DVD rom from their A1 and tried to hook it up to a computer. It worked and was recognized by Windows but it couldn't play HD-DVDs. I'm not sure if it was resolved but they thought it was simply a matter of software support.

I wonder if you took that drive, put it in an external USB case and hooked it up to the Qosmio if you could play movies using WinDVD? Are you interested in voiding your warranty sphinx99? :D
-Matt

the more interesting question for me would be if you took the drive out of the A1 or XA1 and popped it into a desktop PC (or enclosure, but I would be worried about the traffic over USB) and then used the drivers from the Toshiba laptop for the drive! (although i believe the Tosh HD DVD players use NEC drive and the laptop uses a Tosh drive)...

I have some information for ya'll. But first - Toshiba has posted an updated nVidia driver + updates to WinDVD HD for the following issues:

Problems fixed by the patch to the WinDVD HD app:
The Bookmarks feature did not work correctly ("THE LAST SAMURAI", "The PHANTOM OF THE OPERA", other Warner Brothers titles).
The Feature Commentaries menu could not be closed by clicking "Setup", then "Feature Commentaries", if the menu was already displayed ("APOLLO 13").
Menus would not appear when the "Title Menu" or "Route Menu" was clicked from the disc menu during playback ("APOLLO 13").
"Subtitles" is displayed after pressing Up on the remote to show a different menu item (under the Feature Commentaries menu) ("APOLLO 13").
The Popup Menu did not appear during playback ("THE LAST SAMURAI").
Selecting Stop during playback caused an application error ("MILLION DOLLAR BABY").
Ejecting the disc during playback caused an application error ("MILLION DOLLAR BABY").
Audio and video could become unsynchronized ("SERENITY", "APOLLO 13").
"DOOM" did not play correctly.

OK, that said, Toshiba has also posted the following:
TOSHIBA UDF2.5 File System Driver for HDDVD for Windows XP (v1.0.0.2; 04-28-2006; 683K)
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlViewDL.jsp?soid=1404750&moid=1209149&BV_SessionID=@@@@2072464587.1150600942@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccdaddidielhmicgfkceghdgngdgmn.0&ct=DL

???

I just got one of these babies from Circuit City and I LOVE IT!

Best laptop I have ever owned by far. It is a great performer on games and it has an AMAZING 1080p screen to watch HD-DVD's on.

Very, very nice.

Over here in the UK it's had a six week delay and still no concrete news on it's arrival date. The delay has had me seriously re-considering my pre-order.

Has anyone who has managed to get hold of one of these in the US got an HDMI 1.1 A/V Receiver (e.g Denon, 3806,4306 etc) that they can connect the Qosmio's HDMI output to?

Intervideo's WinDVD HD is supposed to support the new audio formats:-

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/cgi-bin/shownews.php?id=8754

As I've already mentioned HDMI 1.1 and the HDMI transmitter used in the Qosmio have the capabilities to pass 8 channel HD audio. Since my purchase has been delayed I'm dying to know if the Qosmio will pass the new HD-Audio over HDMI.

Until it arrives I still have the option for a refund and over in the UK it costs the equivalent of $3999. So you can understand why I don't want a capable but handicapped HD-DVD player in my laptop at that price.

Update - my laptop is starting to display "there is a problem with the cooling system, please power off and contact the service department" messages during HD-DVD playback. Great... After some research, I'm led to believe that this is a somewhat common problem with Toshiba laptops, that they have several years' track record of overheating laptops.

BBB recently gave Toshiba America Information Systems an F, so I'm understandably nervous about the whole affair. I guess we'll see...

Do you find one the core's running at nearly 100% constantly during playback, which causes the over heating.

Nope, both cores run around 70% during playback.

sphinx, I was considering the Qosmio, but based on your feedback this looks like not such a good idea for now.....

Well, I'm just a single data point. In most respects, this is a fantastic laptop so I wouldn't want to say that my experience (good or bad) is reflective of the experience of others.

That said, after a few attempts to reach Toshiba's customer service via telephone, all I can say is that I'm pretty stunned by how difficult it is to reach someone and have a common sense conversation with them. I'll take Dell's outsourced CS over this any day!

It's just that since buying the Qosmio I've read numerous things about Toshiba's poor support and build quality of PC electronics especially in the notebook arena; the Tecra's okay but everything else seems to be risky. The Qosmio G3x series is new so it remains to be seen whether these things will last the test of time. Based off my initial ownership experience thus far (squeaky hinge, now the overheating warnings) I'm a little nervous.

I did another test - placed the laptop on stand that leaves the bottom almost completely exposed, then placed a pretty high output fan directly underneath the laptop so that during operation, the bottom is actually *cool* to the touch. Powered up, threw in Chronicles of Riddick, and got through the first four chapters before the same warning came up and the CPU throttled down. So whatever it is, I guess it's real.

sphinx, is this a problem that developed over time? I don't recall you having this issue when you first got the laptop and started watching HD DVDs?

Thanks for all your info...

Well, I'm just a single data point. In most respects, this is a fantastic laptop so I wouldn't want to say that my experience (good or bad) is reflective of the experience of others.

That said, after a few attempts to reach Toshiba's customer service via telephone, all I can say is that I'm pretty stunned by how difficult it is to reach someone and have a common sense conversation with them. I'll take Dell's outsourced CS over this any day!

It's just that since buying the Qosmio I've read numerous things about Toshiba's poor support and build quality of PC electronics especially in the notebook arena; the Tecra's okay but everything else seems to be risky. The Qosmio G3x series is new so it remains to be seen whether these things will last the test of time. Based off my initial ownership experience thus far (squeaky hinge, now the overheating warnings) I'm a little nervous.

I did another test - placed the laptop on stand that leaves the bottom almost completely exposed, then placed a pretty high output fan directly underneath the laptop so that during operation, the bottom is actually *cool* to the touch. Powered up, threw in Chronicles of Riddick, and got through the first four chapters before the same warning came up and the CPU throttled down. So whatever it is, I guess it's real.

Thanks for the honest heads-up. I had a similar experience with my Sony Vaio (poor CS) and promised never to touch them again. However, looks like Tosh is no better. Hmmm....wonder if HP intends to put out an HD DVD notebook.

...got through the first four chapters before the same warning came up and the CPU throttled down. So whatever it is, I guess it's real.

I would try to get an exchange or warranty repair. There are various ways chips can fail/degrade (leakage, blown gates, etc.) so you could have been unlucky with an infant mortality failure (anytime under 3 months IMO). For example a chip that is not handled correctly for static electricity may get some insulated gates punched through the silicon dioxide layer. After a few weeks metal migration grows through the punched hole and the gate gets stuck on.

Bob

sphinx, is this a problem that developed over time? I don't recall you having this issue when you first got the laptop and started watching HD DVDs?

Thanks for all your info...

The laptop has always run a lot hotter than I would have expected, but my experience is more on the desktop and data center side so I figured that might be normal. It's a *lot* hotter than my Latitude D820, for what it's worth, and they're fairly similarly configured, and it's been that way since day 1.

The overheating just cropped up recently however :(

Still dealing with Toshiba CS. My gut feeling is that there's a fan that's not turning on, or that ventilation is just not good enough [by design] during high load. I'm thinking of waiting for a month or two (just not using the thing) to see if this is a more widespread problem; then, their tech/service department would stand a better chance of dealing with mine. My worry is that it's just poor design, which is something that can't be "repaired" per-say... :(

Dang, that sucks. Mine still works fine.

*crosses fingers*

Dang, that sucks. Mine still works fine.

*crosses fingers*

I too am considering this notebook. I recently saw one that someone in our office bought. It surely looks like a piece of art! It was brand new (less than the week) and th owner used to have a Dell XPS notebook prior to this and was very happy with the Tosh.

I was tempted to buy one immediately :D , but I think I'll wait to see what his experience is for the next couple of weeks or so. From the few minutes I used it on Thursday, it was blazing fast and the screen is amazing. I didn't test the HD DVD player, but he said that it worked well with the few movies he had tried...

FWIW, my current Sony Vaio runs a lot hotter than my Dell (810). I planning on upgrading the Vaio with the Qosmio.

Guys,

That Nvidia driver V83.27 from latpopvideo2go has killed my Qosmio. Whilst playing a DVD it crashed and it now reboots every 3-5 minutes without starting up properly. It complains that the nv4_disp driver has got stuck in an infinite loop. I've tried using the recovery disk but it's hasn't worked. I cant even start windows in safe mode.

It seemed to be working fine for about a week, but I'd recommend going back to v82.27

Any news on the overheating front?

In another review, I read that supposedly Toshiba is aware that no audio output from HDMI is a problem, and that a fix is in the works.

Anyone run the AV 650 with Vista yet?

How about using RAID 0 compared to RAID 1 configurations? None of the reviews seems to discuss this.

Just an update... I'm still dealing with the nightmare known as Toshiba USA computer systems service. I can now say that their ability to support their computer systems products is among the worst I've ever seen. Yes, worse than the local Ford dealership. Worse even than the attitude you'd get at the coney island!

I'd advise people to steer well clear of the Qosmio HD-DVD products. Stick with the cheap set top boxes which seem to have a stronger track record. I wouldn't post this except that in my journey I've run into a number of other Qosmio owners whose laptops sit in repair depots for months on end.

I'm considering the purchase of a Qosmio G35-AV660, and I read this entire thread. At first I was very enthusiastic, then increasingly disappointed. I hope you get your issues resolved. I have a 4+ year-old Satellite that has been a warhorse - it's on its second keyboard, second motherboard, and second screen, but I love it and am finally ready to move on. I might just wait a few more months, though, since Toshiba seems to have not worked out the real-world issues with this platform. Good luck and thanks again for sharing so much.

It's back! It actually functions! (Well mostly.)

Yet another fan replacement and now the unit itself seems to be okay. Local shop tried ordering a motherboard just in case and has had trouble getting ahold of one. They may be in backorder.

The laptop is functioning well again, except that lately the drive tends to pause (overheating?) during certain disks every few minutes for a second or two. Frustrating. The hinge also squeaks a bit now. I won't be purchasing another Toshiba consumer computer product for a while, I think.

That said, it's still a speed demon with incredible sound and perhaps the best display I have yet to see. When movies are playing on the native 1080 panel, well, it can be pretty amazing.

I'd love to hear any feedback from anyone on the various state of affairs regarding this laptop regarding drivers, nVidia PureVideo HD, available HD software players, etc. There is very little information on the net about these things...

I just got my Qosmio G30 this week. It's the Canadian edition with Windows Vista Home. It's quite incredible and other than learning that my TV has a massive overscan issue because I hooked up the laptop via the HDMI (which only outputs 1080i - TV upconverts to 1080p).

It's easy to use and I'm using the provided Toshiba HD DVD Player, but I have the HD version of PowerDVD and haven't yet tested it fully. I hooked the TV capture card as well and watch some Satelitte on it last night and did some test recording. Everything seems to be working as it should.

I'll have a full review in the weeks to follow.

I just got my Qosmio G30 this week. It's the Canadian edition with Windows Vista Home. It's quite incredible and other than learning that my TV has a massive overscan issue because I hooked up the laptop via the HDMI (which only outputs 1080i - TV upconverts to 1080p).

It's easy to use and I'm using the provided Toshiba HD DVD Player, but I have the HD version of PowerDVD and haven't yet tested it fully. I hooked the TV capture card as well and watch some Satelitte on it last night and did some test recording. Everything seems to be working as it should.

I'll have a full review in the weeks to follow.
I'm finally getting mine tomorrow (ordered it a while back, but I haven't been home for DHL to deliver it for the last few weeks). I'll be setting it up dual boot Vista Ultimate / XP Pro, and will report on my experiences as well. It'll be both my main writing/email machine, portable content creation laptop, and demo machine for our encoder tools.

Sorry to update my old thread!

Has anyone been able to get the recently posted HD-DVD player software off Toshiba's web site working? I cannot install it, I keep getting "there are problems with setup.exe" errors when trying. I've found a few allusions to others having the same problem. Frustrating, to be sure!

I haven't actually watched a HD-DVD title in quite a few months with this crappy HD-DVD player. I do like the screen though.

I have a Qosmio g-35 for 13 months now. 1 month out of warranty.
Last week my motherboard went out. I went to a Toshiba factory repair site and they said it would be $500.00 and thats its out of warranty.
I tried to get customer service to help with the repair since it is a motherboard and I was only one month out of warranty. I made it all the way to customer service manager, was left on hold for over an hour and then disconnected without ever talking to anyone about my problem.

I am very disappointed with this $3000.00 purchase. I was told Toshiba laptops are quality. Like everyone else, the HD-DVD has never really worked.
This thing has never left my office and I treat it like gold. So why does the motherboard out of the blue just fail?

I was hoping they would want to keep a customer happy for what is clearly a defective product. It looks like I will never buy Toshiba again. Customer support is important and they seem to not even care.

Any suggestions to how I might get them to pay for the repair?

Hope this helps anyone thinking about buying one. Toshiba is bad news.