Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359 Take Two: Displays and Drivers

HD DVD and Multimedia

One of the potential selling points of the X205 is that it includes an HD DVD drive. It also includes an HDMI output, so if you need a portable HD DVD player as well as a laptop, it can fulfill that need. We tested the laptop with our HDTV using the HDMI output, and it worked pretty much as you would expect. You can of course also simply watch HD DVDs on the laptop, which brings up an interesting question: how does the more demanding format affect battery life?

We decided to put that to the test, so we picked up a copy of Babel, a recent HD DVD release that uses H.264 encoding with a high bitrate. In other words, this is more of a worst-case scenario for HD DVD playback, but considering that this should also be a reasonable representation of the highest quality possible using HD DVDs we feel the use of this particular title is fair. So how did the X205 do on battery while playing an HD DVD?

On the one hand, the net loss in battery life compared to playing a DVD isn't as bad as it could be. In a worst-case scenario, watching an HD DVD results in about 35% less battery life than watching a DVD. Unfortunately, the starting point for DVD battery life on this particular laptop is only 105 minutes, which isn't long enough to get through most movies. At 78 minutes, battery life for HD DVD playback clearly isn't long enough to make it through any full-length films. For the time being, users definitely should not plan on watching HD DVDs on plane flights using this notebook - at least not without an extra battery.

We also wanted to take a look at CPU utilization while playing Babel, and it's pretty obvious that the 8700M GT is doing its job and handling much of the work. CPU utilization hovers around a relatively constant 15%, ranging from 10%-20%. Of course, DVD playback can be provided with less than 10% average CPU use, and ranges from around 5%-15% CPU use. Having the GPU offload some of the work for doing H.264 decoding is good for achieving smooth frame rates, but that doesn't necessarily mean the GPU isn't using just as much power as a CPU might require. Considering that we've already shown that battery life is reduced by watching an HD DVD, it shouldn't come as a surprise that power requirements are higher when playing high definition content. The following table summarizes the results.

HD DVD vs. DVD Playback
	CPU Usage	Power Draw	Battery Life
DVD	5-15%	~45W	105
HD DVD	10~20%	~55W	78

None of this means that having an HD DVD drive in your laptop is a bad thing, but considering the added cost and the fact that watching high definition movies on battery power isn't feasible, we can't really say it's a good thing either. Toshiba is one of the major backers of the HD DVD format, so it was pretty much a given that they would include an appropriate optical drive in their latest laptop. Unlike a PS3 that tends to be hooked up to the HDTV in the living room all the time, laptops like to roam free and we figure anyone likely to be purchasing HD DVD movies probably already has an HD DVD set-top player. If you want to take your HD movies on the road, having an HD DVD drive in your laptop might be a nice feature, but around the house we don't see it as being all that necessary.

One final note is that Toshiba's HD DVD player software can also be used to enhance the output of regular DVDs. The overall difference in quality wasn't dramatic, but it did appear to be better. Power use and CPU use also went up, however, nearly matching the requirements of playing Babel (52W and 20%-30% CPU use) so if battery life is a concern users will be better off sticking with the Windows Media Center interface.