14. Toshiba TS-L802A Slimline Internal Player

In September 2005, Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology announced the TS-L802A as "the world's first slim HD DVD read drive for notebook PCs." Another real advantage of the HD-DVD format is realized in this device's incorporation of a single objective lens that it can use to read HD DVD content, as well as to read from and write to conventional DVD and CD media.

Figure 10: This slim drive was the first HD-DVD player to take up residence in a notebook PC.

Its first generation status is confirmed in the unit's read and write performance statistics: 1x read for HD-DVD content, 8x for conventional DVD content and 24x for CD content. Write statistics perforce omit mention of HD-DVD (as with other players, this unit only reads HD-DVD content): DVD-RAM write 4x, DVD+-R/RW write 4x, CD-R write 16x, and CD-RW write 10x.

As an OEM only product, this drive is not available to retail buyers. We were unable to find much information about the drive interface supported, one reliable source reports that it supports the ATAPI interface with an 8 MB buffer.