Multimedia mavens sitting firmly in the Blu-ray camp have had the option of burning high-definition discs for some time now, courtesy of the Sony VAIO AR series. (Read our recent review.) While rival HD-DVD notebooks have also been available, their ability to burn HD content has been M.I.A.--until now.

 

The Toshiba Qosmio G45-AV680, sporting a glossy, piano-key white finish, is the first notebook to feature an HD-DVD-R optical drive. Although the drive burns high-definition data at only 1X speed, users can store up to 30GB of content per disc (in comparison, a single-layer Blu-ray disc burns 2X speed, yet houses 25GB of data).

 

The laptop's 17-inch display is beautiful for playing back high-definition video in a full 1080p resolution (1,900 x 1,200 pixels). In addition, the G45-AV680 comes bundled with the Toshiba USB HDTV Tuner (for viewing and recording live high-definition TV from an antenna, cable line, or satellite set-top box) and a remote control. Complementing the cutting edge visuals are Harmon Kardon Bass Reflex stereo speakers, a built-in subwoofer, a 1-Bit Digital Amplifier, and Dolby Home Theater technology for delievring top-notch notebook audio.

 

Besides its multimedia capabilities, the G45-AV680 packs plenty of other high-end features: 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics (with 255MB of memory), 2GB of RAM (expandable to 4GB), a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Windows Vista Ultimate, a fingerprint reader, and a massive 320GB hard drive for storing all of  your multimedia content. Expandability options come in the form of an Expresscard/54 slot and a 5-in-1 memory card reader.

 

The Toshiba Qosmio G45-AV680 is available for purchase immediately starting at $3,199.