Toshiba today announced the world’s first slim HD DVD drive for notebook PCs that can read and write to HD DVD, standard DVD and CD discs. Sample shipments of the new drive, SD-L902A, are scheduled to start by the end of this year. Toshiba SD-L902A integrates a blue-violet laser diode that can read and write to HD DVD-R discs and that offers support for high-density HD DVD-ROM discs, including high definition movie and video images. The drive also offers the functionality of a super multi-drive, with high performance, high-speed read and write to all flavors of standard DVD and CD discs. Toshiba SD-L902A also supports recording and playback of DVD-RAM, -R, -RW, +R, +RW, CD-R and -RW discs.
The drive measures 128 x 12.7 x 126.1 mm and the weighs 170 g.Toshiba will demonstrate the new drive at CEATEC JAPAN 2006, at Makuhari Messe from October 3 to 7.