As the battle for dominance between HD DVD and Blu Ray continues, Buffalo have just introduced the first internal HD DVD player for desktop PCs. It allows for playback of double-layer 30GB HD DVD video movies and will weigh in at a price tag of around $338 USD.

For more info on it head over to NordicHardware or Engadget folks.

Hard to believe, but this HDV-ROM2.4FB drive from Buffalo (OEMed by Toshiba) marks a world's first HD DVD drive for PCs. Sure, the Toshiba Qosmio and other media savvy boxes already ship with integrated HD DVD, but you're not going to find any ATAPI HD DVD drives sold independently for PCs. It ships with the third party, PowerDVD HD DVD Edition software required to watch your MPAA-friendly high-def titles in XP or Vista and reads DVD±R/RW and DVD±R/R DL, DVD-ROM and CD-R/RW/ROM formats as you'd expect. At ¥38,850 (about $338) it's a pretty good deal when these ship at the end of the month in Japan, right? Sure, but the $199 Tosh-built Xbox 360 HD DVD player is already out and perfectly capable of pumping HD DVD vids natively under Vista (and even XP after some found driver magic) after installing the appropriate media application. Decisions, decisions.