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CyberLink Corp. today announced support for the latest Blu-ray™ Disc technology BDXL™. Released by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) in June 2010, BDXL is a multi-layer recordable Blu-ray format with up to 128GB of capacity. CyberLink Power2Go 7, launched last month, is the first BDXL-compatible software application in the market with further CyberLink product lines to follow shortly.
Support for BDXL means users of CyberLink’s media burning software, Power2Go 7, are now able to burn up to 4 layers of data totaling 128GB on a single Blu-ray Disc, opening up exciting new content storage and archiving possibilities. CyberLink’s long-term focus on providing support for Blu-ray Disc technology developments will see products including PowerDVD, PowerDirector, PowerProducer, and MediaShow introduce BDXL format compatibility in the near future.
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Today at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), D-Link and Boxee announced the upcoming Boxee Box by D-Link is now powered by the Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100. Additionally, starting today, US customers will be able to pre-order the Boxee Box by D-Link exclusively through Amazon.com at http://amzn.to/boxeeboxbydlink. Units will begin shipping in November 2010 in the US, Canada, EU and Australia.
The award winning Boxee Box by D-Link, first released in December 2009, received critical acclaim from the industry and is highly anticipated by consumers. The product is the first media device capable of playing most popular media file formats from a home network or external hard drive along with free and premium TV shows and movies, videos, music, and photos from the Internet, with support for full 1080p high-definition (HD) and 5.1 surround sound.
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Today at the Intel Developer Forum, the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) announced nearly 120 products have passed SuperSpeed USB certification testing. Certified products include motherboards, notebooks, external storage devices, storage controllers, hard disk drives, PCI Express and ExpressCard add-in cards and device-enabling silicon, and new device classes continue to emerge.
“Since the first certified SuperSpeed USB product was announced last year at IDF 2009, we have witnessed exponential growth in the ecosystem,” said Jeff Ravencraft, president and chairman, USB-IF. “Strong support from consumers and manufacturers alike and momentum behind the technology continue to drive the industry forward as new SuperSpeed USB products are developed, tested and certified.”
“In-Stat forecasts that SuperSpeed USB, with its high throughput and low power consumption, will gain substantial market penetration in industries requiring transfer of increasingly larger amounts of data," said Brian O’Rourke, Principal Analyst, In-Stat. “Cost is also a key factor in new technology integration, and the aggressive volume pricing for USB 3.0 host controller will help spur adoption.”
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Sonic Solutions today announced a new version of its high-end Blu-ray Disc production toolset, the Scenarist® BD Workgroup, featuring options for encoding, authoring, debugging, and formatting premium entertainment for commercial release on Blu-ray 3D. Based on its 3DAccess initiative and feedback from a collective of Sonic's professional users who elected to work closely with Sonic to solve the complex 3D production workflow issues, Sonic's new Scenarist-based Blu-ray 3D workgroup offers a host of new capabilities, including:
- Sonic Scenarist BD 5.5 – comprehensive support for Blu-ray 3D Profile 5 authoring. Includes support for 3D MVC video streams, 3D pop-up menu graphics, 3D subtitles, and 3D Java content.
- Sonic CineVision® 3.5 – extensive Multi-view Video Coding (MVC) codec support with deep, segment-based parameter controls to deliver mastering quality 3D video streams. CineVision 3.5 also features a new, more efficient timeline that maintains its industry-defining segment controls while adding new instant preview capabilities for completed 3D encodes.
- Scenarist QC 1.5 – provides real-time Blu-ray 3D emulation and title debugging for Blu-ray 3D authors and QC specialists.
"With 3D capable TVs coming to the market in force this year, we knew we needed to be ready to deliver the high-impact productions we're known for in 3D for our studio clients; and Sonic has been there for us every step of the way," said Thomas Schmithausen, Manager Multi Media Services at Infomedia GmbH, Dortmund, Germany. "We chose Scenarist years ago because of Sonic's on-going development and commitment to enterprise-level production businesses like ours. The Scenarist 3D Workgroup has everything we need to delight our clients, and now in three dimensions!"
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Pliant Technology recently announced the expansion of its Lightning product line with two new MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash storage devices. The Pliant Lightning LB 200M and Lightning LB 400M enterprise flash drives (EFD) are based on an advanced controller design and software architecture that delivers dramatic I/O performance and reliability improvements over existing SSD technology and low energy consumption in demanding enterprise computing environments.
"Pliant's new Lightning LB drives provide IT managers and OEMs with greater system design flexibility," said Greg Goelz, vice president of marketing, Pliant Technology. "These new drives are a great addition to Pliant's existing SLC product family, providing enterprise IT managers with higher capacities and lower dollar per gigabyte metrics, while still providing the level of enterprise-class reliability and endurance not previously available with any other MLC solution on the market today."
Pliant Lightning LB MLC NAND-based products are available in a 2.5-inch standard form factor, with capacities from 200GB to 400GB and a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface to integrate seamlessly into existing SAS enterprise storage and server systems, without requiring modifications to existing applications, operating systems or infrastructure. For real world workloads, they feature high sustained performance with input/output per second (IOPs) of >10K (LB 400M) and >8K (LB 200M) for 4KB 70/30 read/write with very low response times. These performance levels deliver very fast response times under heavy workloads and enable system designers to build high performance RAID storage solutions with multi-terabyte capacities in 1U and 2U configurations.
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Fujitsu Semiconductor America, Inc. (FSA), a leading innovator of USB 3.0-compliant technology, has expanded its lineup of USB 3.0-SATA bridge controllers, introducing the new MB86E50 series for external USB 3.0 RAID storage devices.
The Fujitsu MB86E50 is specifically designed for external USB 3.0 dual-port RAID and non-RAID configurations. It supports RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) as well as JBOD ("just a bunch of disks") and Dual LUN configurations. An available integrated high-speed encryption hardware engine makes the controller an ideal design choice for demanding RAID storage applications using external hard disks or solid state drives.
In addition to RAID, the MB86E50 features transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, hot plugging of devices, and support for the USB attached SCSI (UAS) and Bulk-only Transport (BOT) protocols. The controller incorporates a high-performance 32-bit RISC MPU and an embedded SSCG to optimize SuperSpeed performance while reducing EMI. The MB86E50 includes full legacy support for high-speed USB (480Mbps) and full-speed USB (12Mbps) devices, and supports SATA Gen2i (3Gbps) and Gen1i (1.5Gbps), ATA, and ATAPI drives.
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LaCie debuts today sleek USB 3.0 hard drives for your desktop or pocket – the LaCie Minimus and LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0. Proving size does matter, LaCie delivers the industry’s fastest transfer speeds at 5Gb/s in its ultra-small Rikiki form factor – perfect for users that refuse to sacrifice performance for mobility; and the LaCie Minimus – for users that enjoy their terabytes as much as desk space.
Complementing their remarkably small sizes, the Rikiki and Minimus hard drives are encased in sturdy brushed aluminum for an elegant aesthetic appeal. The aluminum offers resilience from blunders, improved heat dissipation, and is fully recyclable.
Designed to be simple from the inside out, the Rikiki and Minimus come with LaCie’s Software Suite to ensure seamless setup and backup support for Mac or PC. Additionally, each product comes with 10GB of Wuala online storage so you can securely store and share files online.
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QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the Fall 2010 refresh of its Business Series Turbo NAS servers which are hugely popular with SMB and corporate users for their sheer performance and business-ready features. Announced today are the 2-drive TS-259 Pro+, the 4-drive TS-459 Pro+, the 5-drive TS-559 Pro+, and the 6-drive TS-659 Pro+ with up to a whopping 12TB of online storage (using 2TB hard drives). The new Business Series Turbo NAS Pro+ models incorporate new dual-core Intel® Atom™ processor D525 with 1.8GHz clock speed and 1GB RAM, which can achieve up to 116MB/s transfer rates (FTP/Samba reads) while maintaining guaranteed low power consumption.
Businesses looking to embrace cloud computing will find the new Turbo NAS Pro+ models interesting as they are fully VMware and Citrix ready and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters compliant. QNAP continues its industry-leading iSCSI support on all the new models for fully virtualized server clustering and virtualized environments including support for MC/S, MPIO, SPC-3, and thin provisioning. With built-in iSCSI initiator and target service, network storage can be virtually expanded by simply adding additional QNAP Turbo NAS units to the network and adding virtual volumes, up to 8 per device. Data security is built in, with volume-level AES 256-bit encryption.
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Matrox Video Products Group will demonstrate direct capture from HDMI, SDI, and analog HD or SD video sources to H.264 files with the Matrox MXO2 devices and Matrox MAX technology for PC at IBC 2010 on the Matrox stand 7.B29.
"This new direct H.264 capture utility enables smooth workflows for faster delivery of video content and dailies," said Dan Maloney, Matrox technical marketing manager. "Now it's easy to capture material from any source for use on the web, iPad, iPod, iPhone, YouTube and more! In addition, dailies can be immediately available as low bit rate, manageable-sized files for delivery to a client."
"We're continuing to add value to the Matrox MXO2 product line," said Alberto Cieri, Matrox senior director of sales and marketing. "With this we have started to implement our vision of expanding the capabilities of Matrox MAX technology beyond H.264 export acceleration."
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Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced they are now shipping their new “USB 3.0 Express RAM Cache™ drive”. Available in 32 & 64GB capacities, this new drive implements a DRAM caching system to boost small block random performance by up to 300%.
As most manufacturers are announcing their first USB 3.0 flash drive, SuperTalent is announcing their fourth. SuperTalent is also currently the only USB flash manufacturer offering a caching system on their drives.
Sequential read and write speeds only show how a drive will perform when copying large files. In “real world” applications, we are often reading and writing 100’s of smaller files and in some cases even booting to the drive. In these instances traditional flash designs show their weakness and a caching system can dramatically improve performance. For example, say you wanted to copy 40 MP3 files to your flash drive. By adding a caching system, the Express RAM Cache drive can now write these same files 260% faster; instead of taking 13 seconds, this transfer now takes less than 5 seconds. As the file size decreases and the file count increase, this time savings becomes even more apparent.
