Fujitsu Readies Blu-ray, HD-DVD PCs
Instead of taking sides in the DVD format wars, company will offer both technologies.Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Fujitsu hasn't taken sides in the next-generation DVD format battle, and as such it plans to launch in late June a desktop PC with a Blu-ray Disc drive and a laptop PC with an HD-DVD drive, the company said this week.
The format decision was largely one of necessity, said Miho Hirasawa, a spokeswoman for Fujitsu in Tokyo. At present, Blu-ray Disc drives are available only for desktops, while HD-DVD drives exist only for laptops, thus the selection, she said. She declined to name the drive manufacturers.
The drive in the FMV-Deskpower TX95S/D desktop will be a Blu-ray Disc reader/writer compatible with pre-recorded movie discs and recordable and rewritable data discs of 25GB or 50GB capacity, she said. The machine combines a 37-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) panel monitor with a computer in a single case and is designed to look like a flat-panel TV. It includes a digital TV tuner, HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) input connector, and is based on an Intel Pentium D 820 processor. It has 1GB of memory and a 600GB hard drive.
Portable PC
The FMV Biblo NX95S/D laptop has a 17-inch widescreen XGA+ (1400 x 900 pixels) display, which is slightly less than full 1080 high-definition available from HD-DVD. There's a video output socket on the laptop, but that's limited to standard definition so there is no way of watching content in full HD quality. At its heart is an Intel Core Duo T2300 processor. The computer has 1GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive.
Neither computer will be cheap. The desktop will cost around $5064 while the laptop will cost about $3380, said Hirasawa. At present Fujitsu has no plans to sell them overseas.
Earlier this week Toshiba, which is the main backer of HD-DVD, laid out plans to sell an HD-DVD equipped laptop in mid-May. The Qosmio G30 also has a 17-inch widescreen LCD panel but it has a higher resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels (WUXGA). The machine is due on sale in Japan, Europe and the U.S. and in Japan it will cost about the same as the Fujitsu laptop.
Sony, which is the major force behind Blu-ray Disc, is planning to launch desktop and laptop PCs with Blu-ray Disc drives in the middle of this year, it said Wednesday.