For a while back there, it was enough to be able just to get your hands on a HD-DVD drive for your PC. We have now entered the next stage of marketing, known as the -est stage: Smallest, fastest and so on.
Asus's HR-0205T claims to be the quietest. The ATA drive will spin single and dual layer HD-DVD discs and single layer HD DVD-R discs at 2.4x speeds, and also handle any DVD or CD at 15x. And how loud is it? Asus claims 21.1dB (rising to 23.7dB for dual-layer DVDs). The Register offers 26dB as the standard noise level for a notebook hard drive, so this thing is almost silent.
Price and availability are still unknown, but expect more and more of this feature differentiation until eventually the HD-DVD drive becomes just another $20 commodity item.
Asus intros 'quietest' HD DVD drive [Reg Hardware]
