Toshiba has pledged to equip its entire laptop range with HD DVD drives next year. Right now, only one of its notebook's comes with a next-gen optical disc reader, with four more coming in a month or two.

The announcement comes after Toshiba admitted it won't sell as many HD DVD devices this year as it previously forecast. And with video rental chain Blockbuster apparently colouring its HD media shelves Blu, the near-term future for HD DVD hasn't looked good.

But in 2006 Toshiba shipped around 9.2m notebooks. If it only matches that figure in 2008, that's still a heck of a lot of HD DVD drives in circulation. It's hard to see Sony selling that many PlayStation 3s, for example.

The range of HD DVD laptops it presently carries has already begun expanding. It announced earlier this week that it will add HD DVD drives to four new models in addition to the Qosmio range of notebooks already available with HD DVD drives - though you'll have sit tight until Q3 for availability.

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