Toshiba Puts HD-DVD Drives in All Laptops

Toshiba has announced that it will ship HD DVD drives in all of its laptops starting in 2008, according to the senior vice president and head of the “never give-up” division. The company has been losing the format fight against Blu-Ray recently, with several companies dropping HD DVD completely and committing fully to Blu-Ray.

Still, the new move is a good one by Toshiba — one of the bigger laptop retailers, it could even get them back in the Blu-Ray race, which is great news for all of us really wish they’d pick a damn format already.

According to data from IDC, Toshiba sold 9.2 million notebooks last year and is in the top five overall shipments — so, that’s 9.2 million future notebooks with an HD DVD drive, something that definitely brings the format back into the game and gives Blu-Ray a run for its money… again.

Toshiba also plans to use flash memory in their laptops, as soon as this month — mostly due to prices on NAND chips falling far enough to make it feasible.

You’ve got to hand it to Toshiba — they’re doing what they can to keep their format alive. Personally, we think someone needs to either create a hybrid of the two formats or the feud needs to end soon — we don’t care how we get our HD, someone give up already. Right now, our money is still on Blu-Ray, but we’re both tired and slightly surprised to see Toshiba still in the game.