toshiba

Twofer Tuesday as Toshiba adds laptop SLI

With the Digital Life expo coming up this week in New York, you can expect plenty of new product announcements from consumer technology companies. Toshiba is stepping up with some new laptop news, and we'll get the exciting part of it out of the way first.

We're pleased to see the company adding Nvidia SLI technology to its Satellite X205 gaming notebook series. That means two graphics processing units (GPUs) inside, just like high-end gaming desktops. Two new models, the Satellite X205-SLI1 and the Satellite X205-SLI3, will offer twin Nvidia GeForce 8600GT chips, which are DirectX10 compatible (if … Read more

Photos: Toshiba Gigabeat T

Toshiba has officially announced the Gigabeat T400, a $120, 4GB MP3 player that has the potential to give the iPod Nano and Creative Zen a run for their money. We'll have our full review up on CNET in the next few days, but our initial impression is that the audio and video quality are both excellent. We are pretty bummed, however, that it has a maximum capacity of just 4GB, with no room for expansion. Also, where's the Wi-Fi found in the Japanese version? Still, with a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, and support for WMV video, as well … Read more

Report suggests Blu-ray/HD DVD war will end in peaceful co-existence

This story's been puttering around the blogs for the last few days, but I missed it until I saw an entry on our sister site Gamespot. It goes like this: Some U.K.-based analyst firm, Screen Digest, has issued a report saying that the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war is destined not to have a winner--it's going to end in a stalemate. But that's not necessarily the end of the world, the report suggests.

Sure, there's been all this talk lately about studios switching sides for money, but what the report implies is that if … Read more

The new face of the notebook market

With HP's decision to release a slew of new laptops that offer a slick design and nice specs, it had me thinking: is this the new face of the notebook market? Are notebooks becoming commodities that can be differentiated only by design?

And if all of that is true, what will happen to brand loyalty? Is it another victim of this vicious battle?

I think it is.… Read more

Toshiba romancing Warner to date HD DVD exclusively?

First, Paramount and DreamWorks Animation get bought off to go HD DVD exclusive. Now word is Toshiba's trying to romance Warner into flipping. The only problem is Sony's doing its best to seduce the last dual-format studio into exclusively shacking up with Blu-ray.

This lurid next chapter in our favorite little tech soap opera comes to us by way of The Digital Bits, which links to an L.A. Times story (also printed in Newsday) that suggest serious bucks are being dangled by both Toshiba and Sony to win Warner's affections. Wal-Mart's in the mix, too, … Read more

Matrix fans wait all night for the red HD pill

LONDON--Last week, we mentioned that HMV Oxford Street was the place to go this morning if you were a Matrix fan and wanted to pick up a free HD DVD player (the Toshiba HD-E1) with your purchase of the box set.

We were expecting this to be a popular promotion, but we were blown away by exactly how many people were prepared to queue all night in a filthy alley just off Oxford Street in order to snag a free player.

The queue was full at 5 a.m., and then it was just a matter of the fans standing … Read more

Toshiba hits 160GB with tiny drive

Toshiba on Wednesday pushed the capacity of its 1.8-inch hard drives up one more notch to 160GB but said it also made the products more power-efficient.

The 8mm-thick, dual-platter model also employs a new interface called CE-ATA for consumer electronics devices. Toshiba also introduced a 5mm-thick single-platter 80GB drive; both drives spin at 3,600rpm and have an average seek time of 15 microseconds.

Toshiba won't comment on who's buying this drive, but it doesn't take big brains to figure out one company Toshiba is courting: also on Wednesday, Apple introduced new iPod media players with 160GB drives. … Read more

New Toshiba LCDs pinch an inch

Yesterday at the CEDIA show in Denver, Toshiba added to its strangely named "Regza" line of LCDs with a pair of models designed to maximize the amount of front-panel real estate devoted to the screen. Badged with the even stranger moniker "SNB," for "Super Narrow Bezel," the 40-inch 40RF350U ($1,899) and 46-inch 46RF350U ($2,499) indeed have some narrow-looking bezels. In fact, when we compared the 46-inch member of the Sharp LC-D64U series (the thinnest-bezeled LCDs we've seen yet) to its SNB competitor, the Toshiba's panel was narrower by all of 1.22 inches in width and 1.53 inches in height, although the Sharp was less deep by 1.56 inches. So when the Toshiba press release uses the phrase World's Thinnest LCD TV Bezel, we believe it. Other highlights include:

Toshiba RF350U series key features

1080p native resolution Three HDMI 1.3 inputs VGA-style PC input with up to 1366x768/1280x1024 resolution 10-bit panel with xvYCC color support Dimensions of 46-inch model (panel only, WHD): 42.1 by 25.9 by 5.3 inches Dimensions of 40-inch model (panel only, WHD): 36.7 by 22.8 by 5.1 inches September release date… Read more

Toshiba's big and clever hard drives

Toshiba has announced new ranges of hard drives that it believes are larger or cleverer than anything that came before them.

First up is EasyGuard, which is all about hoarding and protecting your data. The first product in the range is an external 2.5-inch laptop hard drive with a massive 320GB capacity and a 'freefall' sensor that protects the read/write heads in the event of shocks or drops.

The second EasyGuard product is a "ruggedized" (but not freefall-enabled) external hard drive with a fingerprint reader (pictured). The idea is that this'll keep your data secure, … Read more