I got a chance to play around with the new HD DVD technology (in the form of a high-end Qosmio laptop from Toshiba) and my review is in today’s paper. But, unfortunately, our web site doesn’t seem to like me so my review has not made it online yet and it’s 9 a.m.! – boy, we’re so with it!

**Update at 10 a.m.: I finally found the review, though it’s still not showing up on the Money page of the Register’s Web site. Sigh. Read all about my HD DVD experience HERE.

The gist: It’s a nice computer though the $3,000 price tag is too high for most. Even for me – someone who paid $3,000 for a laptop with a DVD-ROM in it back in 1998.

HD DVD is high-definition DVD. Today’s DVDs are not high-def, but standard definition. Truthfully, it was hard for me to tell the difference between the HD DVD and regular DVD but I don’t consider myself a videophile. A videophile at work tells me he can definitely tell the difference between a DVD movie and the high-def broadcast on his HDTV. So, there is a market for this stuff.

HD DVD competes with Blu-ray Disc technology. Both work on shiny discs that look the same as today’s DVDs and both are backwards compatible so they will play your existing DVD collection. The quality is excellent on screen but there are some unfriendly features in the laptop that I feel are more of an early-adopter issue. The software for the HD DVD player was updated during my three-week test and without it, playing DVDs was far from smooth.

But after the update, everything worked swimmingly and I was able to send the video out to a giant HDTV I’m testing.

A few other details that got cut from my review because of space:

* One of the cool features of Qosmio laptops in general is they have TV functions. You don’t even have to boot up Windows XP to turn it on as a TV. But to watch HD DVDs, you need to boot up. I expect this to change as high-def DVDs become more common.

* I am so glad someone developed HDMI - the cable used to plug high-def gadgets into high-def TVs. This cable sends video AND audio to the TV so you only need one cable. The Qosmio unfortunately didn’t come with an HDMI cable so I had to go out and buy one. Alternatives to HDMI are DVI and composite cables but I believe you also need a second cable for sound.

*HD movies are hard to find. At Circuit City, the store intermingled them with the regular DVDs. Even though HD DVDs have smaller cases, I expect confusion to ensue. Fry’s Electronics had them grouped together, but there were so few – maybe 15 movies. It was disappointing. There were more Blu-ray movies available. And Blockbuster isn’t renting them at the store only online. In the future, I’d probably just buy them online at Amazon and get free shipping. For a list of HD DVD and Blu-ray movies, check Wikipedia.

For more on the differences between HD DVD and Blu-ray, read some of my earlier articles from Jan. 14, 2006 on the topic:

* High drama in high definition
* The movies
* Q&A on the next-generation of DVD
* Can’t decide? A future DVD chip that has it all

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