Product Reviews

Remember the first time you went back to a VHS tape after you'd got used to DVDs? Well prepare yourself for a shock - high-definition video is on the way. It crams anywhere up to 1,080 lines into a picture, compared with 470 lines in a normal TV signal, and it's going to make DVD movies look as blurry and soft focused as old video tapes.

As well as being broadcast over digital TV, the new HD content will come on two types of disc - HD-DVD and Blu-ray. These are competing, mutually-exclusive standards, but they both have massive storage capacities - 15GB for HD-DVD and 25GB for Blu-ray. Writeable discs will soon follow - allowing PC users who invest in an HD-DVD or Blu-ray writer to archive massive amounts of PC data to a single disc.

Toshiba is one of the major backers of the HD-DVD standard and the Qosmio G30 is the first HD-ready laptop to be released in the UK. It comes complete with an HD-DVD disc drive, a massive HD-ready screen and a special port for outputting HD video to an HD-ready TV.

A sight to behold

Beneath its stylish silver lid the Qosmio G30 houses a 17in screen with a massive resolution of 1920 x 1200 - more than enough to display full HD video. Colours are incredibly vivid, while images are crisp, clean and beautifully bright. This is in part due to the glossy surface of the screen, which has the downside that it's quite reflective. This isn't too much of a problem in a normal home environment - it's only in airports or hotel lobbies that it will start to irk.

We tried some sample HD videos and the result is nothing short of astonishing, and even on the Qosmio's 17in screen the level of detail is truly remarkable. There are even reports of Hollywood stars hating the new technology as it shows up every wrinkle and blemish on their faces - we can well believe it.

The great picture quality is complemented perfectly by the integrated Harman/Kardon stereo speakers. Most laptop speakers couldn't possibly produce enough volume to fill a room, but these do and the sound quality is impressive. The bass is rich, making sure explosions are reproduced in all their glory, but not at the expense of details at the high end. Together they make the Qosmio G30 a realistic alternative to a TV in a study or bedroom, and there are outputs to connect to external speakers if you'd prefer.

The Qosmio also has an integrated analogue/digital TV tuner so you'll be able to watch either Freeview or normal television, depending on what services are available in your area.

HD versatility

The real focus of the Qosmio G30 is the HD-DVD drive, and although discs are not available yet in the UK - several titles such as Serenity and The Last Samurai have been released in the US - they should be arriving in the UK towards the end of the summer. The drive can only read the HD-DVD discs, so you won't be able to burn your own - but it can read and write DVDs and CDs like a normal DVD writer.

The HD-DVD drive

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isn't the only trick up the G30's sleeve. HD will have the biggest visual impact on larger TVs, or when displayed using a projector. The majority of HD-ready TVs and projectors receive their signal via an HDMI port, which can carry both full HD video and HD surround-sound. You could theoretically, send HD video via a conventional DVI connector - but there's a catch. Because of the copy-protection applied to it, most HD content won't display properly when sent over a DVI connection. It will either be garbled or displayed at a lower resolution. The G30, however, has one of the new HDMI ouputs that's compatible with HD-DVD's copy protection system. This means that you'll be able to use the Qosmio as an HD-DVD player and hook it up to your HD-Ready TV.

It's not perfect though, as you'd expect with any format taking its first tentative steps. The HD drive will play your films with no problems, but there are many more advanced features of HD-DVD that it won't support, such as the Picture-in-Picture modes and planned internet interactivity. It's also not one of the fastest at burning DVDs, compared with the latest laptop drives.

Happily for all, there are no compromises elsewhere in the Qosmio G30. Inside sits one of Intel's powerful yet efficient Core Duo processors and 1GB of memory, which helped it complete our 2D benchmarks 27% faster than the reference desktop PC. This demonstrates that corners certainly haven't been cut in order to fit the new drive into the specification.

This is a Media Center laptop, so gaming isn't a priority, but the Qosmio features the mobile version of nVidia's superb 7600 series graphics chip, the GeForce Go 7600. If you want to play the latest games you'll need to lower the resolution, though - in Call of Duty 2 at our standard 1280 x 1024 settings, it chugged through at 17fps. Lowering that to 1024 x 768 boosted it to 26fps, so reducing a few of the detail settings from there should see you through to a playable frame rate.

Impressive features

The Qosmio weighs an intimidating 4.8kg, so it isn't really designed for life on the go. This being the case, we were surprised when this laptop lasted for three hours and 19 minutes in our light-use test - a good result. And it took only two hours to charge up the battery from the mains - again, a good result. In our DVD battery rundown test the Qosmio lasted for just over two hours, enough to get you through most movies.

As you'd expect, the Qosmio has integrated Wi-Fi, so you can browse the internet away from your desk. There's also a six-in-one media card reader, so your photos can be transferred regardless of what camera you use, and Bluetooth serves the same purpose for most modern mobile phones. The keyboard is well laid out and comfortable. If we have a complaint it's that it doesn't use the full width available. We'd prefer to have seen a number pad next to the standard keys, for example - and the shiny finish around it very quickly picks up unsightly fingerprints.

The Toshiba Qosmio G30 is undoubtedly a groundbreaking laptop - there's currently no other way to play HD-DVDs in the UK. By the time the first discs arrive though, living room HD-DVD players should be available, so there's no need to rush out and buy this laptop just to plug it into your TV.

If what you really want is a Media Center laptop, and the HD-DVD support is just a bonus, you won't find one more stylish, powerful and future-proof than this. Unless you're absolutely desperate to buy now, however, we recommend waiting until the price drops a little.