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.
According to a code writer's post at the Doom9 video enthusiast forums, the copy protection of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats has been already broken. The forum member claims he wrote a software, named BackupHDDVD, that bypasses the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) protection found on the new storage formats and allows users to copy data from the otherwise restricted discs to a PC.
The software is not completed and is limited a few HD DVD titles, the program appears to confirm early fears that AACS is too similar to CSS, the encryption scheme used by standard DVDs and bypassed by Jon Lech Johansen in 2002. If this is confirmed, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD copy protection for future disk will need a serious revision
Have a look at the video showing an “unprotected” HD DVD movie!
The hack seems to be as simple as finding a generic HD-DVD drive driver, then getting PowerDVD or WinDVD with the HD-DVD upgrade on, then plugging in the drive over USB and sticking a disc in. Hardly rocket science!
Presumably, you could even remove the drive from the casing and plug it directly into your PC over SATA, mounting it in a spare drive bay and earning some serious kudos.
The guys from uneasysilence were able to hack the new HD DVD drive from Microsoft Xbox. Using the Cyberlink PowerDVD software you can have the cheapest HD PC on the market right now. They also have lot of about the hack. I think Microsoft should send hacking documentation with their future products. Each they are releasing a new product, hacks are on the market faster and faster. Enjoy!
Samsung announced an HD-DVD notebool, with a Core Duo T25000, a 17” display with a 1920x1200 resolution, a nice GeForce 7600 graphic card (GDDR3 256MB), an HDMI output, S/PDIF, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, SRS 3D… and of course an HD-DVD player. These notebooks go for a bit more than $3800. Source : akirabahanews
Here’s the Toshiba slim HD DVD optical drive for laptops. The SD-L902A measures 12.7-millimeters in height and integrates a blue laser that can read and write to HD DVD-R, access HD DVD-ROM media and act as a multi-drive to read and write to to DVD and CD discs.
HP is rolling out several HD DVD-based products for the 2006 holiday season. One of them is the HD100 external HD DVD drive (see picture), connecting via USB 2.0, it's a 2x HD DVD reader plus DVD and CD playback. Cyberlink's PowerDVD HD DVD Edition software is included for HD DVD playback. If you're looking to buy a whole new system -- which you'll probably need -- the HP Pavilion m7600n Series PC includes Windows XP Media Center Edition, Intel Viiv technology, HD DVD drive, built-in NTSC tuner and 7.1 surround sound capabilities. For HD on the go, there's always the Pavilion dv9000t laptop with an optional HD DVD and DVD burning drive, 17-inch 1440x900 LCD, HDMI out, 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GPU.
CyberLink announced today that CyberLink PowerDVD has passed the testing requirements for the playing of HD DVDs. PowerDVD has also been verified for the playback of the Blu-ray Disc formats BD-ROM and BD-R/RE. Meanwhile, CyberLink PowerProducer has passed testing for the recording of video content onto BD-RE discs.
Acer America Corporation, one of the leading worldwide suppliers of IT solutions, today announced the North American availability of its new 20.1-inch wide-screen Aspire 9800 high-definition notebook PC. Introduced to the world in June at Computex Taipei, the Aspire 9800 notebook combines cutting-edge multimedia PC performance, HD- DVD technology, IP-based communication facilities, and superior TV, audio and gaming functionalities.
CyberLink Corp. today announced that HD DVD playback software available on Acer multimedia notebooks is based on leading technology developed by CyberLink.
The Acer Aspire series notebooks 5670, 9110, 9510, and 9800 include all-in-one entertainment software developed by CyberLink, branded as Acer Arcade(TM). Depending on the notebook model, Acer Arcade lets users access their photos, music and videos, play DVDs and watch digital TV via the same intuitive interface. The latest version of Acer Arcade also supports the playback of HD DVD discs, allowing users to enjoy the richer details and improved features of Hollywood HD DVD releases.
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. 
