Rock officially offering Blu-ray (and HD DVD, still) drives on laptops

by Darren Murph, posted Mar 4th 2008 at 11:51AM

Although Rock began offering a Blu-ray option on its pricey gaming rigs soon after Toshiba threw in the HD DVD towel, prospective buyers were forced to specifically inquire in order to get one. Now, however, the company has finally bit the bullet and began offering internal BD drives as an option on its gamut of gaming laptops. Reportedly, Rock's CEO Nick Boardman proclaimed that he was "disappointed that HD DVD didn't make it," but noted that even if you have a machine on order right now, you can "stick with HD DVD, downgrade to DVD-RW or upgrade to Blu-ray" sans issue. Interestingly, the company is still offering up HD DVD drives as "standard," but we suppose it has to move that suddenly worthless inventory somehow, eh?

[Via Tech Digest]

Filed under: Industry, Blu-ray, HD DVD, Media PCs, Others

Tags: blu-ray, format war, FormatWar, hd dvd, HdDvd, rock, support

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Chris @ Mar 4th 2008 12:39PM

I hate that you keep referring to HD DVD as worthless. It isn't. It still has a lot of good features and capabilities in it, even if Blu-Ray won the media format war. Full adoption of Blu-Ray for all forms of media and data storage won't be universally accepted for a while. And I don't see any immediate plans to start selling computer games in Blu-Ray format anytime soon. Selling a HD-DVD drive standard in a computer that will probably only be used for 3 to maybe 4 years average for gaming is not a bad thing. As it is, if I were purchasing a gaming laptop (right now), I wouldn't mind upgrading to a disc burner that can record that much information on a single disc (dual layer or not). Talk about being able to store data easily. I'm really getting sick of your site's blatant bias and am beginning to consider getting my HD news elsewhere.

Neutral

Chris @ Mar 4th 2008 12:41PM

"in Blu-Ray format *(only)"

Highly Ranked

Mr. E @ Mar 4th 2008 1:47PM

Sorry Chris, but you may want to take off your HD DVD fan glasses and read again. He's saying the HD DVD READ ONLY drive that's standard is worthless to buy into now. Okay, it may have *some* value if you happen to already own HD DVDs, but for the VAST majority of people, it is a basically worthless choice. 99.99% of customers looking for a high-def read-only option would be much better off getting the BD-ROM with DVD writer. I'm sure that's why the standard HD DVD reader is 102 pounds (around $200, I believe) cheaper. Inventory closeout, no doubt. If you don't care about HD DVD or Blu-ray at this time, save yourself $70 or so and just get the DVD burner.

Now, if you really want to burn high capacity discs, you could go for the HD DVD writer, but I would not recommend it. How long will the HD DVD blank media be available, and will they ever be available at a reasonable price? BD-R and BD-RE writers and media will be exploding in availability and dropping in price over the next few years.

And what games are coming on HD DVD discs? I've never heard of such a thing.

Highly Ranked

JimC @ Mar 4th 2008 3:59PM

Wow such vitriol coming from someone who is still clinging to a technology that was abandoned by its developer. If Toshiba can move on, why can't HDDVD fanboys?

Neutral

Felix @ Mar 4th 2008 3:44PM

finally....
the forum board member (which also its customer) has been requesting Blu-ray all the time. Even the company's president (NICK), at one post admit that BD IS BETTER THAN HD DVD.

Neutral

ajai jacob @ Apr 5th 2008 11:30AM

can you upgarde a normal dvd writer of a laptop to a blue ray one? plz help

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