Toshiba do have a problem on their hands. HD video is sexy (especially on high resolution laptops)However their implementation of it (HD-DVD) failed to be accepted in the marketplace.

HD-DVD as a format has now been relegated to the bargain bin.

As a dual format guy, I have benefited from all this cheap 1080p goodness, so I am far from complaining.

It does seem like Toshiba are compensating in their updated range of laptops.

Take the 18.4″ Qosmio G55 with its Quad Core CPU.

However a media machine like this with no Hi-Def optical drive is a pretty big problem.

There is next to no downloadable HD content. Apple iTunes doesn’t count because their HD content requires an AppleTV.

I doubt Toshiba can afford to wait the next 3 to 5 years before HD downloads become a reality.

Link: http://explore.toshiba.com/

To read my other posts about the Toshiba Qosmio G40 Click Here 

Here is my experience/observations about watching 1080p HD content on the Toshiba Qosmio G40.

Toshiba loaned me the G40 over the Christmas holidays.

Before I get started the issue of the Hi-Definition format war needs to be addressed.

There are two formats HD-DVD and Blu Ray. Until early January 2008 both were competing for consumers. However Warner Bros announced they would be going Blu Ray exclusive from June 2008. This means that 70% of the movie studios support Blu Ray and 30% HD-DVD.

If you are getting into HD in 2008 the smart move format wise is to go Blu Ray (regardless about how your feel about one side or the other).

So in this article I will concentrate on the HD laptop experience.

The Qosmio G40 has a HD-DVD Drive that can playback HD-DVD movies and is also a HD-Writer. I did not have optical media available to test the writing capability of the drive.

Software 

Toshiba provide DVD and HD-DVD playback software, the user interface of this was very neat and understated. The player had an interesting feature of being able to playback DVD/HD-DVD content from the hard disk. This feature isn’t available on other software players for copy protection reasons.

The Qosmio G40 boasts that it’s display is 1080p

All HD-DVD and Blue Ray movies typically have video on the Discs encoded in 1080p format. This is so it looks great on large HD screens.

The key here is large. On a laptop a 17″ screen is large, but in home cinema terms a 17″ display is the complete opposite..tiny.

So is having a 1080p screen on a 17″ laptop meaningful? Yes and No. You need a resolution like 1920×1200 for a 17″ display anyway and this gives you 1080p by default. However even though you are watching 1080p and the quality is amazing a 17″ Screen will never do 1080p HD Content justice. A much larger screen say upwards of 46″ and 1080p begins to shine.

How does Hi-Def compare to DVD?

I got hold of the same movie in both DVD and HD-DVD formats the recent SCI-Fi film Serenity and played sections back to back for comparison.

The first thing you notice about Hi-Def is the sharpness of the image quality.

In layman terms the HD version of the movie has about 3 times the amount of detail.

DVD looks absolutely fine until you compare it to the same source in HD. Then any of your “DVD is fine” arguments go out the window. Mine included.

So HD playback on the Qosmio G40 was fantastic, The screen in the G40 looks amazing especially when playing back HD video.

Connections

I connected the G40 to my 32″ 720p Display using HDMI without a problem. I did the same comparisons between DVD and HD-DVD on this larger display. Naturally HD looked considerably better. In this example I was comparing 720p up scaled DVD to 720p HD-DVD.

I would have liked to see an Coax Out for my digital sound, but I am old fashioned I guess

Conclusion

The Qosmio G40 is about as much fun as you can get for digital media playback.

The combination of a really fast CPU, great video card and fantastic speakers means you never have to compromise with your digital media, the G40 does it all effortlessly.

Official Link: Toshiba Qosmio G40

To read my other posts about the Toshiba Qosmio G40 Click Here

I was very lucky over the Christmas break to still have the Toshiba Qosmio G40 on loan from Toshiba.

Typically you get a week to review stuff, but I got lucky with Christmas  break in the middle I had the G40 for nearly 3 weeks.

This review model was tricked out with Core2Duo 2.4Ghz, 512mb NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT Video Card, HD-DVD Writer and a lovely 17″ Widescreen 1920×1200 resolution screen and is an absolute joy to use.

I have previously said on this site I am a really bad “Computer Gamer” but I did want to see what the  video card in this laptop was capable of.

I chose Half Life2, Return of Castle Wolfenstein which both installed and worked well under Windows Vista Ultimate. I grabbed these from my Steam account so about a 5.5gb download.

I though that the 4200rpm hard disk speed would hinder performance when loading levels but was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the experience was on both these titles.

Next up I grabbed the Demo of Bioshock (a 2gb download again from steam) a game that demands a powerful machine. Sadly this refused to load. I suspected that the graphics drivers would need updating and found that on the official Toshiba site more recent ones were available.

Tip:I tried getting the drivers from  Nvidia first and they said go to Toshiba.

The download speed for the updated video drivers from a toshiba.de (German) domain was shockingly slow at about 15kbs, files on my connection can come down at 450kbs. So that was a little frustrating.

Then when I read the video driver readme file I saw I also had to perform a bios update as well as a driver update so I got to thinking, if the bios update went bad I could have a £2000 brick on my hands. So I erred on the side of caution and decided not to bother.

Between downloading games and drivers I kind when off the boil.

To be honest I didn’t really want to spend my holiday doing technical support, I get enough of that in the day job.

So in conclusion The titles I played all looked and sounded fantastic, but with PC gaming there is always an element of D.I.Y involved. I used to like that when I was younger and learned a lot about DMA’s and IRQ’s getting things to work.

However I would imagine that the type of potential customer for a Qosmio G40 isn’t really a twenty something gamer or family looking for a laptop. This begs the question who is the target audience for the  G40?

The best analogy I have on who the Qosmio G40 is aimed at is well…Lexus drivers really, the Qosmio at this spec level is reassuringly expensive at £2000+ ish. The G40 does ooze quality but like lexi its not for everybody.

So I prematurely ended my incursion into G40 gaming. To be honest what I was more interested in was delving into HD-DVD which will be the subject of my next post about the Toshiba Qosmio G40.

Official Link: Toshiba Qosmio G40

This is part of a series of posts I am going to create about the Toshiba Qosmio G40. Toshiba were kind enough to loan me one for review.

First things first the picture above is not an optical illusion the Toshiba Qosmio G40 is large, very large the screen is 17″. Now the screen maybe 17″ but the laptop lid measures a whopping 20.5″.

This laptop is stuffed with all the latest desirables:- HD-DVD (writer), a beautiful Hi-Definition 17″ 1080p screen. Intel Core2Duo 2.4Ghz, 400gb Hard Disk, 2 Gig of Ram, Harman Kardon speakers, HDMI out, Biometric security and a webcam  etc.

It shipped with: The Laptop, Power Cable, Windows Media Centre Remote, RCA Component Cables (to a 3.5m jack) and a HDMI cable. The installed operating system was Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit)

Out of the box the installed programs looked like this:

Windows Vista Ultimate took a good 20-25 minuets to install, rebooting several times during the process. Not a great user experience, but that’s not Toshiba’s fault.

Once reaching the Windows Desktop a total of 65 Processes were running in the background. Slightly more than I would like but typical for a consumer laptop.

The Windows Vista Experience Index out of the box is 4.5

Now something that is throwing me is the Device Manager reports two separate CPU’s

Normally I am used to seeing Core 2 Duo CPU’s listed identically, like below

However on the Qosmio it lists a T7300 and a T7700.

Ill see if I can find out the story behind that.

My everyday laptop is a Dell XPS M1210 12″ Form Factor Laptop.

I’m not seriously comparing the these two but it is important to gauge the sheer size of the Qosmio

I would say the size of the Toshiba is one of its strong points, the audio/visual experience for example is the best I have encountered from a laptop. This is to be expected from a device in this price range.

That’s all I have time for in today’s post. But tune in later for:-

Does it Game?

What is watching HD-DVD on the Qosmio G40 like?

Is 1080p on a 17″ screen that meaningful?

And More…

Offical Link: Qosmio G40 Series

The whole HD-DVD/Blu Ray format war continues. So do your homework first.

I personally favour the HD-DVD format, so I have created a quick video with my current thoughts about the costs/offers for Christmas 2007.

I may however choose to sit this one out as I think within the next 6 months the format war will be over and this seasons sales will play a big part in that decision.

Interested in this topic? Check the video below.

This video runs for 3m47s

Click the Play Icon to view.

Notes: Amazon Does not list the two free HD-DVD’s in the box, other retailers do. If you want piece of mind you could order from Play.com for example.

Play.com Link:
http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/3497129/Toshiba-HD-EP30-HD-DVD-Player/Product.html

Amazon Link
Toshiba HD-EP30 - HD DVD Player - With 1080P Full HD3 - Plus 5 Free HD DVD’s (See Below For Voucher)