Posts Tagged HD
Qosmio Review: Part 3d
Gaming
Sorry for the delay between the last part and this part – I was ill, and GTA IV was released 
So anyway, I have no screenshots, as the laptop has been formatted in order for it’s return later today. However I can say that apart from the very latest games, such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) etc. This laptop managed to run everything on full settings.
The games I tried out on the laptop (albeit briefly tried) were:
- The Sims 2 (incl. Nightlife)
- Command & Conquer 3 Kane Edition
- CoD4
- Black & White 2
- Half Life 2/Counterstrike Source
- Unreal Tournament 2004
For a little run down of the games and how they looked and performed, click below 
Qosmio Review: Part 3c
HD DVD Playback
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
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.
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 I may post short reviews of the films when I’ve watched them.
