HP's First HD DVD Rom Exposed

Hewlett Packard has announced its latest external HD DVD ROM device unit for PCs. The new device is aimed at the consumer market and is said to satisfy the demand in what concerns HD media playback.

HP’s hd100 external optical drive can read, CDs (14x maximum), DVDs (5x maximum) and HD DVDs (at up to 2.4x speed) and supports all known CD and DVD standards. The external unit connects to the PC using an USB 2.0 interface and comes with an additional power supply unit bundled by HP. The bundle also contains a copy of CyberLink’s video player.

As for system requirements, a high-end dual-core CPU, such as AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, Intel Pentium D 945 or more is needed in order to use the HD playback capabilities of the drive. The company also recommends that you use at least an ATI Radeon X1600 or Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT video card. HDCP capabilities are required if you intend to play copyrighted HD material.

In case you don’t remember this about HP, note that they’ve always been a Blu-Ray backer up until 2005 when several HP proposals regarding the Blu-Ray standard were rejected by the Blu-Ray association. Ever since then, HP announced that they will also sustain HD-DVD format. Later that year, they were already shipping the HP Pavilion dv9000t laptop with HD DVD built-in.

HP’s HD DVD may draw sound appealing, but keep in mind that this external unit costs well over $500, making it twice as expensive as Xbox’s own external HD DVD unit (which can also work with PC’s). At around $600 you can find an external unit with built-in decoders and outputs that will render Hp’s product useless. Buy it only if you don’t find any alternatives.