Joe Blog's A Day In The Life Of Your Average Joe

25Apr/080

Qosmio Review: Part 3c

HD DVD Playback

As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, the Qosmio has a HD DVD-R Drive :D Now as I have a few HD-DVD's, I figured I would try this out. Especially given that it also sports a Full 1080p HD Screen!

So I popped in the HD DVD (The Matrix if you must know) and the HD DVD player launched. I have to admit, this slowed the system down a little, and changed the theme to Windows Vista basic, however I expected this, as playing HD content requires a lot of processing power.

I should also mention that if I paused the movie, and minimised the player window, I was able to do other things (i.e. yesterday I was torrenting the new Ubuntu 8.04 release all day).

So, overall, combined with the killer audio system, the HD DVD playback was brilliant, the images were sharp, black's were very dark etc. I think the sharpness of the image was helped a little by the small 17" screen - It's small when you consider I watch HD movies on a 37" screen usually ;) - however I can't really say much more than this, other than the playback was flawless :) So I've attached some screenshots, though I don't know how good the image quality will be, I know it won't do justice to the HD images ;)

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11Apr/080

Toshiba Qosmio G40

So today, I received a Toshiba Qosmio G40 from the nice guys over at talktoshiba.com and I have to say - I was a bit sceptical when they approached me asking if i wanted to borrow a £2000 laptop for a few weeks.

All of that was gone however when DHL turned up at the door :)

My first impressions of the machine are:

  1. It's big - really big (intended as a desktop replacement I assume)
  2. It's not THAT attractive, I think this is partly the size though
  3. Sound is good quality
  4. Screen is good quality

I'll post some more thoughts over the coming weeks, ending with a final review, which could just be a collection of all previous comments in 1 big post :)

UPDATE

Some pictures for you to look at :)

Qosmio G40G40 Lid

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21Feb/080

Wiki Editing

It's not as geeky as it sounds. Purely because it isn't Wikipedia :)

Instead it's on http://wiki.ubuntu.com as I figured it'd be an easy way to get a little bit more involved in the Ubuntu community, without knowing how to get the program code and contribute through development.

I added a wiki page for myself, which can be found here.

On another note - I will be posting up my Pro's & Con's of Blu-Ray Vs HD DVD in the coming days.

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19Feb/080

Farewell

Somewhat annoyingly only a week and a half after I bought an HD DVD player...Blu-Ray emerges the victor of the High-Def Format "War".

I'm not bothered though, as there's still many films available for HD DVD :) I read the rumors as I'm sure a lot of other people did over the weekend that Toshiba were pulling out of the HD DVD production, but I read the final news on the BBC News website earlier this morning.

So it's been good, and in the end the superior (albeit more expensive) format won. Congrat's, it's just a shame it's a Sony Corp technology.

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11Feb/080

HD DVD Player

I bought one :) I've been wondering whether to get one for ages. Even though the format looks somewhat doomed, I figured if I could get one cheap then it'd be worth it, seeing as there's still 400+ titles out for the format :)

So I bought the add-on for my Xbox 360, for £50 ($97 US) which is around half the retail price everywhere I've seen. The HD-DVD I got with it was The Kingdom. I've also got the following ordered though a couple are out of stock on Play.com:

I'm looking forward to getting them, as so far the picture has been brilliant (though I've seen Full Metal Jacket in "HD" and it was worse than the normal DVD) as my TV supports 1080p input :D I may post short reviews of the films when I've watched them.

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26Jan/081

Upscaled DVD’s

I have to say, since I bought my new tv, and went back to using the component cable to connect my Xbox 360 (at 1080p as well :D ) instead of the VGA Cable, I've noticed a significant increase in the picture quality of my DVD's.

Now, I've watched movie's on an HD DVD player at 1080p (full HD) before, and the image quality and sound is brilliant, I can't say much for Blu Ray, as I've never watched a Blu Ray film as of yet. However, while my normal DVD's are nowhere near the same quality as a proper HD source, the image quality is certainly FAR better than that of a normal DVD player.

I'm very impressed...I'm currently watching the Star Wars films on here - in what I call "Semi-HD" ;)

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