And so the battle between Blu Ray and HD DVD continues. In the corner supporting the HD-DVD format is Toshiba, the company that has just announced its latest desktop burner, the SD-H903A. As it is a “half height” optical drive, this burner is “ideally designed for single-bay desktop PCs.”

Naturally, it’s got love for “legacy” formats as well, so you can still plunk in those CD-Rs, DVD+Rs, and so on, but it’s the high-definition stuff that you’ll be drooling over. After all, with a dual-layer HD-DVD, you can stash a full 30GB of goodness. That’s equivalent to five standard DVD films, 7,500 MP3 songs, or 30,000 high-quality photographs.

To get a closer look, head on over to CES 2007 in Las Vegas next week. No word on price, but OEM sampling will commence this month with “volume shipments” starting next month.