ASUS HD DVD-R Notebooks

ASUS has used its presence at CeBIT to showcase updates to two of its notebook lines. The 15-inch W1 and 17-inch W2 are now some of the very first notebooks to ship with HD DVD-R drives, the Taiwanese company says: the top models in either line can now create the extra-large discs as well as CDs and DVDs. Both systems continue to hold on to other media-savvy features, including a digital TV tuner and HDMI output for linking the notebooks with HDTVs.

Performance is otherwise very close to the originals, with both sporting Core 2 Duo processors and either an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 (for the W1 series) or Mobility Radeon X1700 (W2) providing the performance needed to drive HD DVD at its native 1080p resoluion. System costs haven't been revealed but should be similar to the read-only HD DVD versions from late last year.

By Electronista Staff