Following a trend among some makers of standalone dual disc players, Hewlett-Packard this week will begin offering some of its high-end consumer desktop PCs with dual-format drives for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
The HD disc enhancements come as the company also adds several optional upgrades to its HP Pavilion Media Center (m8010y series) and HP Pavilion (d4890y series) desktops, including an Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad processor.
Some computer makers are moving quickly with HD features, hoping that consumers soon will want to manage their content and deliver it to the HD set (such as with Apple TV). Even though the amount of HD content on cable and especially disc is still limited, that can change rapidly, according to CRN.
The HP dual-format drive can read/write Blu-ray Disc, but is read-only for HD DVD. It will be backward-compatible to read/write standard DVD and CD.
