As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, the Qosmio has a HD DVD-R Drive 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

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

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.

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.

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:

• Apollo 13
• The Last Samurai
• Music And Lyrics
• The Bourne Supremacy

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 I may post short reviews of the films when I've watched them.

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"