Toshiba HD DVD Player, Drive Unveiled

Toshiba has unveiled a prototype of its new Toshiba HD DVD player, the HD-XA1. The new player handles the 30Gb variety of HD discs.  The HD DVD player has preliminary model name HD-XA1 and is close to the final design of the commercial player Toshiba plans to launch before the end of 2005, said Junko Furuta, a company spokeswoman in Tokyo.

Hopefully Toshiba will make smaller models because this one looks a bit large to me. But hey, it is the first HDDVD Player ever!

via | Digital World Tokyo

Toshiba will also demo a slimline optical drive for notebook computers that will provide an HD DVD playback capability this week.  The Register points out that in addition to HD DVD playback, the drive supports 8x DVD-ROM, 24x CD-ROM, 3x DVD-RAM, 4x DVD-R/RW, 4x DVD-R dual-layer, 4x DVD+R/RW, 2.4x DVD+R dual-layer, 16x CD-R and 10x CD-RW - so it's got every format covered except Blu-ray of course.

More Toshiba HD DVD news.