The first laptop computer to feature an HD DVD-R drive, Toshiba’s Qosmio Q30, went on sale in Japan over the weekend.

HD DVD-R is the read-only version of the HD DVD format and a single-sided disc can hold up to 15G bytes of data. The format, which is principally backed by Toshiba, is in competition with Blu-ray Disc, which is backed by Sony.

The Qosmio G30/97A is an upgraded model of the existing Qosmio laptop computer that is already on sale in several markets worldwide. It is based on an Intel 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor and has a 17-inch widescreen display with 1,920 pixel by 1,280 pixel resolution, which means it can show high-definition images from HD DVD movie discs.