New Toshiba Notebook Offers HD DVD-R/RW Drive

Toshiba is getting ready to unleash in the United States its first notebook to feature an HD DVD-R/RW optical drive. Announced at CES, it's called the Qosmio G45-AV690 and you can expect to be a pretty penny for this high end notebook PC: around $3,200.

The Qosmio G45-AV690, with its HD DVD-R/RW optical drive, will let you burn, erase and re-burn data, including home-videos, entire photo albums and music libraries onto a single HD DVD rewritable disc. The laptop is built around a 17-inch widescreen display which offers 1080p resolution. This is truly meant to serve as a desktop replacement model given its size and functions.

Other features of the G45-AV690 will include HDMI output, an Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor, NVIDIA’s GeForce 8600M GT GPU3 and Microsoft’s DirectX 10 technology. You also get a bunch of nice add-ins like four Harman Kardon Bass Reflex stereo speakers with a built-in subwoofer, a 1-bit Digital Amplifier, Dolby Home Theater technology and a built-in Web cam. You'll find this all pales though to the HD DVD burner.