HD DVD notebooks are available in the US next week

Toshiba claims the Qosmio G35-AV650, the first notebook to support new generation DVD technology in the US market, will appear on their website later this week and be distributed to retailers right after that.

Qosmio G35-AV650.(Photo: CNet)

G35-AV650, part of Toshiba's Qosmio notebook, is equipped with a 17-inch screen with a high resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels. Movies compatible with the HD DVD format are still rare, but Toshiba said there will be about 200 movies released later this year.

The Qosmio G35-AV650 also incorporates other advanced features such as a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, two 100 GB hard drives, redundant array of independent disk, and 1 GB DDR2. In addition, G35 has Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics card with 256 MB DDR3 memory.

With all these features, the price of the Qosmio G35-AV650 will not be pleasant: at least $ 2,999 and the product is also relatively heavy (4.5 kg).

G35-AV650 works on Microsoft's Windows Media Center operating system but Toshiba decided not to support Intel Viiv program on the system.

HD DVD technology is facing stiff competition from Sony's Blu-ray format. Laptops, players and HD DVD movies have been available in the market while Blu-ray compatible products will not be available before June.