Fujitsu to Launch Blu-Ray, HD-DVD Equipped PCs in June

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 Tuesday.

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 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 and high-definition multimedia interface input connector and is based on an Intel Pentium D 820 processor, has 1GB of memory and a 600GB hard-disk drive.

The FMV Biblo NX95S/D laptop has a 17-inch widescreen XGA+ (1,400 by 900 pixels), which is slightly less than the 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, and the computer has 1GB of memory and a 320GB hard-disk drive.

Neither computer will be cheap. The desktop will cost about 600,000 yen (US$5,064) while the laptop will cost about 400,000 yen, 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 1,920 by 1,200 pixels (WUXGA). The machine is due on sale in Japan, Europe and the United States, 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.

-Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

For related news coverage, read Toshiba’s HD-DVD Laptop to Hit Japan In May, Toshiba Launches 1st HD-DVD Player In Japan and Acer to Ship World’s 2nd HD-DVD Notebook.

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