First HD DVD-enabled PC, USB 2.0 Drive Announced

Among those of us closely tracking the competing next-gen DVD technologies, the concept of HD DVD playback is nothing new--the first living room player shipped last May, and the first notebook with an HD DVD-ROM drive shipped soon thereafter. Unless you're talking about an HD DVD-ROM drive that's already integrated into a desktop PC; now that is a new twist.

Hewlett-Packard--the one time suppporter of Blu-ray Disc that hopped sides to become a vocal proponent of HD DVD--today became the first desktop PC manufacturer (in the United States, at least), to announce a desktop PC with an HD DVD drive. As with the initial salvo of notebook PCs, the drive in the HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7600n Series PC, is playback-only, which means you can watch HD DVD movies, but not record your own data on HD DVDs. However, the drive does double as a dual-layer DVD burner.

HP also announced a standalone external HD DVD-ROM drive for the PC--due out by end of year--making it the first company to offer a dedicated HD DVD playback peripheral. The USB 2.0 drive, dubbed the HP hd100 External HD DVD-ROM Drive, will play back HD DVD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and audio CDs; and it will also read recordable and rewritable DVD discs, but the unit will not, surprisingly (and counter to what the notebook HD DVD drives can do) handle vanilla DVD burning.

(Equally as bizarrely, the photo HP has on its site of the drive actually notes BD, DVD, and CD options at the bottom. I find that a curious annotation, one that makes me wonder whether it's a remnant of HP's past--or perhaps a sign of its future release plans ("BD" is the typical abbreviation for Blu-ray Disc). Another, more simple possibility is that the drive has yet to enter mass production, and the lettering was a simple oversight by the artist mocking up the unit.)

In other news, the company will be offering an HD DVD option on its HP Pavilion dv9000t series of entertainment-focused notebook PCs. The notebook will start at $2,395 (as compared with $3000 for Toshiba's initial HD DVD-equipped Qosmio); the company didn't supply pricing for its desktop or external drives.