Flush with its early CD rewritable success, Hewlett-Packard is looking to make that lightning strike twice - with DVD-recording drives, launched April 3 in the Pavilion ze5300 notebook and planned for personal computers as well.
With pricing at $899 for desktop and $1,723 for the notebook, HP wants to make DVD burning as mainstream as it made CD burning, NPDTechworld analyst Stephen Baker told ZDNet.com.
Apple, Dell, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba provide DVD burning already and are giving a price push, Baker told the tech news Website. "Obviously, among the PC companies, HP, and in some respects Sony, has the most vested interest in moving DVD recording into the mainstream," Baker said. "They're already building awareness in the aftermarket with add-on drives, and they're looking to extend that to the desktops and notebooks."
So what made HP such a late entry? ZDNet says the company wanted to standardize on the DVD+R/RW format, as opposed to Apple, Sony, and Toshiba using the competing DVD-R/W format - and the supply for the former format is tight with the first DVD+R/RW drives hitting the market.
