NEC HR-1100A HD-DVD Preview

CDFreaks mentions C'T magazine[German] whose folks got their hands on a preproduction HD-DVD reader from NEC. HR-1100A lacks AACS and write support. While promised to be fixed, preproduction sample could not recognize high-jitter DVD-R, baldy pressed DVD-ROM, and had not support for hybrid HD-DVD/DVD layers. The issue is due to a single laser used to pick up CD, DVD, and HD-DVD thus making error correction a tougher task to accomplish. C'T also ran a listening test where only 4 out 8 copy protected CDs were read by HR-1100A. On the positive side, the unit showed high access times of 142 ms for CD-R, 370 ms for HD-DVD and even 1057 ms for a DVD-9. Transfer speed read at 2x HD-DVDs average at 8.7 MB/s, whereas DVD-9 stands at 7.4MB/s, DVD-R at 7.4 MB/s, and CD-R at 3.7 MB/s. According to C'T values are acceptable but not excellent.
As you can see, there are still many problems surrounding this particular model and is behind recently tested by same folks Samsung Blu-Ray drive which is built with a 2 lenses( one for CD/DVD and another for BD ) and does not have as many compatibility problems as HR-1100A.

NEC HR-1100A will first be launched for OEMs and later this summer will hit the retail stores for a steep price of €400 ( about $483 ).