HD DVD Laptops

The difference with HP and Acer (I didn't know about Lenovo being involved) is that they support both formats, whereas Toshiba only supports HD DVD. HP has already offered HD DVD as an option on their desktops and laptops for much of this year, and I recall seeing at least one Acer laptop with HD DVD on it, but my memory could be hazy on that.

A company in Ireland called "Rock" was actually first to make HD DVD standard on their high-end laptops.

HP's offering is a combo drive with two versions, where one of them plays both formats, and the other drive plays both and records Blu-ray. I'm sure that Acer would take a similar approach. Neither of these companies are invested in the format war the way that Toshiba is, so they're more likely to let their customers decide on getting a high-def drive in the first place. If anything, they'd probably build in the dual-format reader (which I saw listed as a $288 option on a quad-core HP).

What's wierd about HP is that you can't get Blu-Ray on any HP-branded (consumer) laptops, and you can't get HD DVD on any Compaq-branded (business) ones.

I imagine the price on drives will come down very fast with all those laptops out there.

Earlier this week I was in BB they had a Toshiba Centrino notebook with an HD DVD drive in it for under $900. 3 of the 5 Toshiba notebooks on display had a HD DVD drive. 1 of the 4 Sony notebooks on display had a Blu-ray drive, it was priced at $1800. No other notebooks had HDM drives in them.

My brother picked up a Toshiba Satellite laptop a few weeks ago with HD DVD and an HDMI output. The HD DVD worked fine playing on the laptop's monitor but when trying to output to his RPTV it came up with an error message saying that it can not output HD DVD to an external device. The laptop has a Radeon HD 2600 card, he called Toshiba customer support and they had no idea how to fix the problem but they said it should work. Does anyone here have a laptop in the $1000 to $1500 range that actually works for outputting HD DVD via HDMI to an external tv?

i just ordered a new laptop from hp that should show up next week. i put my order in the day after hp changed its web site for the latest models. there was an error at the introduction page on the website that said the bd drive could also play hd dvd. but, it doesn't according to the details and the talk i had with customer service.

the options for hp laptops are not the same as for desk models.

they offer a combo bd/hd dvd drive for desktop only.

the one i ordered will have hdmi and an hd dvd rom drive that also has dvd/cd writer capabilities.

the other options were bd rom with dvd/cd writer. bd was about $200 more. and...

also, they had an hd dvd writer option.

when i looked around (toshiba/hp) not all models have hdmi.

Sounds like the card is not HDCP capable, that's the key. For what it's worth, they need to be able to be output onto a PJ or bigger display, as one cannot get the gravity of the difference on a laptop monitor.

Pat

The Toshiba Laptop I bought in October with a HD DVD drive does not have a HDMI port, but it does have a VGA port. The TV I'm getting has a VGA port on it so I'm going to try that, but it won't be for a few weeks (seeing what CES has to offer).

Of course I bought a HD A3 last week, so there's not really any point in checking, but I'll do it anyway.

This is going to really increase hd-dvd marketshare... what person who has hd-dvd drive in their laptop wont take advantage of it... even as a storage medium?

BB sells an HP with HD drive and HDMI. it is series 67XX and is a SE or limited edition, the color of the laptop is white and I think it has silver keyboard. If it has HDMI it should be HDCP capable. I remember reading some reviews somewhere about not being able to use this with a tv. But I also read that somebody said that you could only view the built in monitor or a tv but not both at the same time. He said you had to go into the control panel and change the settings for the display to get the HDMI port to work. Someone also said something about the drivers for the Nvidia video card this laptop uses was causing the problem and that the old drivers worked. I sounds like there should be a work around some how and I'm considering picking this up for myself. The price is normally $999 but seems to go on sale for around $849 on occasion. I think Officemax had the same laptop but the color was gold for $849 in last weekends advertisement, but it sounded like you would probably would have to order it.

Met someone with a Toshiba HD DVD laptop today.

Details please?

grin,

I run IMDVD, and I pointed out to a customer that the cover she was holding would not play in a DVD.

"I know...I have a Toshiba HD DVD laptop from Dubai!"

Very cool to hear - 1st time actually. We get a lot of people who because they get told by greedy hardware dealers, think HD will work on a DVD player (HDMI or have HD screen).

Try a different HDMI cable. It might do the trick. Good luck!