I just got the new HP Pavilion dv9096 to review, the latest HD DVD laptop. HP sent it along with a copy of The Bourne Supremacy, since it’s still tough to find HD DVD titles out there at retail.

It’s not the first HD DVD laptop – Toshiba took the wraps off one at E3 in May. But this might be a key product. HP told me its base price will be just under $1,700, which is solid considering it’s a 17″ laptop (and considerably less than Toshiba’s announced price of more than $2,200 for the Qosmio G35-AV650).

Thus begins the holiday format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray. I don’t have a Blu-ray system (like Sony’s AR-190g, $3,100 and up), so I can’t compare performance; what I will do is give my sense of whether, on its own merits, HD DVD has a shot at taking over the world. The review starts tomorrow