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Home / News / Acer delivers HD-DVD laptop no.2

Acer delivers HD-DVD laptop no.2

Team HD-DVD has just extended its lead over Blu-Ray Utd thanks to a piledriver from Acer; it’s just made the second HD-DVD-playing laptop, following T

Team HD-DVD has just extended its lead over Blu-Ray Utd thanks to a piledriver from Acer; it’s just made the second HD-DVD-playing laptop, following Toshiba’s G30 last month.

If anything, the Aspire 9800 is even more accomplished than Tosh’s world first. We may be guilty of over-using the word ‘cinematic’ to describe screens, but not here – it has a 20in, 1680×1050, which is good enough for 1080p high-def.

It’s naturally got Intel’s Dual Core processing – which is officially cleverer than Stephen Fry – and backs it up with a 240GB hard-drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0.

Then there’s that HD-DVD drive. Such an advanced disc-eater is, of course, useless in these days of zero next-gen releases, but the first films are due this summer. Like the G30, it can’t write to HD-DVD discs, but archivists will be able to burn to dual-layer DVDs instead.

The 9800’s not just a glorified portable video player either – there’s an integrated analogue and digital TV tuner, 1.3MP camera and 5-in-1 card reader to take care of your multimedia antics.

Rounding off its tome of a spec list is a particularly neat Voice over IP touch – in the bundle is a Bluetooth phone which connects to the laptop wirelessly and can be used as a speakerphone or normal mobile for Skype calls on-the-move.

So, when can you get your mitts on the HD-DVD monolith? The Aspire 9800 is due to hit the UK in May and, although official pricing hasn’t been confirmed, prices are expected to start at £1500.

Sony may be preparing Blu-Ray Vaios for June but, with the Acer and Tosh double team, HD-DVD is well on its way to the title already.

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home

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