Despite Warner dealing a potential death-blow to the HD DVD format last week, Toshiba remains upbeat at CES with a range of new devices promoting its own HD technology.
Although not all of its new third-generation HD DVD players output full 1080p visuals, Toshiba is keen to push the integrated upscaling technology that will res up your DVDs to near HD quality.
Whatever the future of the HD DVD format (and it looks pretty bleak from where we're sitting), Toshiba's new players for 2008 include the 720p/1080i HD-A3 ($300 / £150), while the HD-A30 ($400 / £200) and the HD-35 ($500 / £255) output full 1080p. The latter two also feature Regza Link, a two-way control system between Regza TVs and DVD players, which uses the hardware's HDMI connection.
The trio of HD DVD players are US-only for the time being. But to Toshiba's credit, it's been quick to convert its American hardware into Euro-friendly versions. Of course, we may never see these players at all if Toshiba waves the white flag in the HD format war.
Qosmio clings to HD DVD
Although Toshiba is claiming strong sales for its consumer players, it is also heavily promoting its HD equipped laptops.
HD DVD's lack of Hollywood support doesn't matter as far as storage is concerned and Toshiba is using CES to intro the world's first laptop with a HD DVD-R/RW drive, the Qosmio G45-AV690. It's a dual-core, 17-inch widescreen laptop, with 3GB of RAM and twin, 160GB hard drives.
Designed for both business and home entertainment, the Qosmio G45-AV690 comes with a fingerprint reader, remote control and Regza Link. If you find the $3,200 (£1,600) price tag a bit hard to swallow, then Toshiba has recently dropped the price on it's other HD laptops, the cheapest now being the Satellite A250 at $899 (£450).
