Introduction

I'm not going to lie to you - I'm a complete and utter Blu-ray fan boy, "down with HD DVD!!"; so when word came that the ASUS BC-1205PT Blu-ray ROM samples were ready to be shipped out it pretty much had the two thumbs up approval from me.

Love or hate this next gen format war someone's going to win it and my Blu-ray collection hopes that it's Sony. While movies are going to be a huge part of who wins the war it's going to come down to availability of players, and while HD DVD has the XBOX 360 along with a small lineup of laptops and the retail market, Blu-ray has not only the Playstation 3 and the retail market but a good line-up of laptops thanks to Sony and a number of ROM drives from not only ASUS but companies like Pioneer, BenQ and Panasonic.

The kind of person who is getting stuck into the format war is the same kind of person who has a good media center PC, so having a competitively priced ROM is quite important for the market. When word came around that the ASUS BC-1205PT was going to be hovering around the mid $300 AUD high $200 USD mark it looked extremely positive.

While it looks like ASUS are going to remain neutral to the war there doesn't seem to be any word on the HR-0205T HD DVD ROM drive that we saw at Computex 2007, and the fact continues to remain that while in Australia you can walk into any store that carries an XBOX 360 and pick up a HD DVD add-on drive you're unable to purchase the actual movies from the same place. Currently Australian HD DVD users have to resort to ordering from online stores and from overseas to get their high def fix. Everyone knows that this is simply a big no no for the Ma and Pa demographic who want to be able to walk into their local video store and pick up their favorite movie in high def glory.

What we're going to look at today is if the BC-1205PT is not only able to replace that DVD ROM of yours but also be welcomed with open arms into your home.