HP Unveils Combo Blu-ray Writer, HD DVD Reader Plans

Hewlett-Packard has long stated its intention to support both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD--the two next-gen formats vying to succeed DVD. Today, the company has unveiled plans to ship PCs that can both read and write to Blu-ray, and can read HD DVD discs. The PCs are the first announced to feature LG's much-anticipated Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc Rewriter and HD DVD-ROM Drive (model GGW-H10N); LG showcased the drive earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The LG Super Multi Blue drive is a triple-format writer. It handles writing to Blu-ray Discs at 2x (single-layer and double-layer), as well as to DVD and CD. The drive does not write to HD DVD, though (no HD DVD writer is currently shipping for desktop PCs).

The drive will most likely be available in HP's Media Center lines, the m8010y and the d4890y. HP hasn't released pricing details; nor has the company offered specific system configurations. However, says HP's product engineer Victor Lee, "all models will have HDMI output, and all models will have an nVidia-based GeForce 8000-series graphics card that's HDCP compliant. The HP graphics cards are proprietary; we use the same GeForce chips as everyone else, but HP does the optimization in the chipset and within the graphics card itself. And CyberLink's player software is highly integrated and optimized for these proprietary HP graphics cards."

While HP expects to make the drive available in 4 to 6 weeks, the company provided PC World with a pre-production demo system equipped with the combo format drive. The PC World Test Center ran a quick test on the drive, using the included CyberLink Power2Go disc mastering software. On this demo system, the LG drive required 44 minutes, 21 seconds to burn 22GB of data to a Memorex 2X BD-R disc.

The systems equipped with the LG Super Multi Blue drive will be HP's second generation PCs to support high-def disc playback. As compared to the first-gen systems, performance has improved: says Lee, "we dropped CPU usage by more than 50 percent." The nVidia-based graphics uses PureVideo HD, which allows the GPU to shoulder more of the video decoding process.

HP's Media Center systems won't be the only way to get LG's Super Multi Blue drive. LG expects its drive to be available in stores by early June.

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