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- Home Entertainment
Blockbuster Inc., a global leader in entertainment, and Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a market leader and award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, today announced they are joining forces to enable consumers to access Blockbuster's vast and growing library of premium digital entertainment via select new Samsung HDTVs, home theater systems and Blu-ray players. The new services will be available in the fall of 2009 and are expected to provide millions of homes across America access to Blockbuster's digital library of movies. Additionally, as part of the agreement, Blockbuster OnDemand will have preferred positioning on the Blu-ray interfaces.
The BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand service provides comprehensive on-screen search and browsing capabilities, as well as full details, ratings, trailers, and other information about each movie directly on the television, eliminating the need for customers to manage a viewing queue on their PC. Once a customer rents or buys a movie, they simply press play to begin instant viewing. Blockbuster's adaptive streaming technology ensures quality viewing with immediate and uninterrupted playback.
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- Hard Disks
Seagate today announced it is now shipping its technology-leading Cheetah® 15K.7 enterprise-class hard drives into the worldwide distribution channel. As the highest performing, highest capacity 3.5-inch mission critical hard drive with best-in-class reliability for Tier 1 environments, the Cheetah 15K.7 drive is ideal for a wide range of server and storage applications. With the Cheetah 15K.7 hard drive, Seagate’s technology leadership moves firmly past the competition as it delivers the industry’s first 15K-rpm drive to reach the 600GB capacity point while providing record reliability of 1.6 million hours MTBF.
The Cheetah 15K.7 drive is available with the latest 6Gb/s SAS or 4Gb/s FC interfaces, and includes Seagate PowerTrim™ technology, which dynamically reduces power consumption. Together, these features enable system builders to deliver lower-cost, multi-drive servers and storage systems, making the Cheetah 15K.7 ideal for use in environments ranging from small and medium-sized businesses to the largest enterprises.
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Today the United States Customs and Border Protection agency ("Customs") issued a ruling in agreement with VIZIO that all current models of VIZIO televisions do not infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,115,074 ('074) held by Funai Electric Company, enabling VIZIO to continue importing America's fastest selling line of televisions without interruption. VIZIO is the number one selling brand of flat panel HDTVs in the U.S. and distributes flat panel televisions through major retail partners. "We believe that this ruling, along with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Final Rejection of Funai's '074 patent, will allow us to successfully bring this issue to a close," stated Rob Brinkman, Vice President of Operations and Administration.
"Today's Customs ruling is yet another major step forward for VIZIO, our supply partners, our retail customers, and most importantly the American consumers who have shown they prefer VIZIO HDTVs over other brands," said Laynie Newsome, Co-Founder & Vice President of Sales and Marketing Communications. "We are pleased that Funai's ill-advised tactics continue to falter and are being rejected by the U.S. authorities; we are determined and remain unshaken by merit-less claims from foreign competitors."
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- Hard Disks
As one of the world’s most recognized and trusted brands, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today unveiled three new consumer products following the acquisition of SimpleTech by Fabrik earlier this year. The new Hitachi branded products include the SimpleTOUGH™ portable USB drive, industry’s only water-resistant and shock-resistant external hard drive from a global hard drive manufacturer; the stylish and colorful SimpleDRIVE Mini™ portable USB drive; and the SimpleNET™ network storage adapter for easily sharing existing USB drive content over a home or office network. All SimpleTech external storage solutions now leverage Hitachi’s award-winning, reliable hard drives and strong global brand creating additional advantages for road warriors, prosumers, small office/home office (SOHO) users, or virtually anyone looking for a simple and reliable way to store, protect, and better manage their data.
“Today’s announcement further extends the Hitachi GST brand into the consumer market with the reliability, confidence and dependability you would expect from one of the world’s leading hard drive suppliers,” said Mike Williams, General Manager of Hitachi GST Branded Business. “Re-branding SimpleTech to the Hitachi brand is an important step in differentiating our solutions in the marketplace. We believe that given the global strength of Hitachi, the close relationships we have built with our end-users as SimpleTech, and the continued support of our retail and channel partners, we are well positioned to move our Branded Business and the industry forward.”
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- Flash Memory
IronKey, maker of the world's most secure flash drive, today announced the launch of its S200 device for government and enterprise customers, featuring hardened physical security, the latest Cryptochip technology, active anti-malware and enhanced management capabilities.
Highlights of IronKey S200:
- The first and only USB flash drive to meet the rigorous government security requirements of FIPS 140-2, Security Level 3.
- Hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption in CBC mode.
- Tamper-resistant and tamper-evident rugged metal case.
- Secure management of encryption keys.
- Anti-malware capabilities in hardware provide an unprecedented layer of protection from malware and prevent its spread onto enterprise and government networks. Add a comment
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- Hard Disks
Verbatim, the storage media specialist, is 40 this year, and to mark the occasion the company is releasing a limited edition gold portable external hard drive. The resplendent gold UV coating of the “Anniversary Edition” houses a 500 GB 2.5” hard drive and includes easy-to-use backup and synchronization software. The drive is compatible for PCs and Macs and is available in shops for a limited period.
The Dmailer backup software loaded on the drive is PC- and Mac-compatible. As it is an executable file, no installation is needed, which makes backing up very quick and easy for professionals and novices alike.
The Verbatim Sync software, which is also pre-loaded, supports users with reliable synchronisation of files and folders, from Microsoft Outlook or Windows mail contacts and calendar entries to documents, photos and videos. This enables users to take the content of their PCs wherever they may go and to continue to work with it on other devices while away. The Verbatim Sync software then synchronises it on their return, ensuring that the content is fully up to date.
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Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, today announced it has signed a partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company, to jointly promote the Smart Video Card as a new music distribution channel. Smart Video Card is a Gemalto innovation that embeds a DVD-compliant optical disc into the card body of a regular SIM card.
The Smart Video Card disc can be preloaded with 120MB of content which can be played in a standard DVD player. The disc pre-mastering can include audio and video encoding, and adding menus and navigation features providing the user with a full multimedia experience. This combined technology provides a unique medium for distribution of exclusive media content that can be enjoyed on the digital music player of choice, such as a PC, handset or MP3 player.
Through this partnership for the world outside North America, Gemalto will be able to exclusively offer UMG content along with its SIM card products, while Universal Music Group International will promote Smart Video Card towards operators that the music group is already working with to deliver online content.
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- Network Storage
QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced a ground-breaking upgrade to the NAS management software that powers its Turbo NAS lineup of ultra-high performance NAS servers. Version 3.1 of the NAS management software, embedded as firmware, adds significant new features including virtual disk support (up to 8 virtual disks via iSCSI expansion over the network), exclusive QNAP RAID Recovery that can recover a degraded or inactive RAID 1, 5, or 6 due to unintentional removal of drives. Network Discovery Services are enhanced with new Bonjour support offering zero-configuration networking for HTTP, SAMBA, FTP, AFP, and SSH based networks, and full UPnP support. Other new features of the 3.1 firmware include EXT4 support for very large volumes and file sizes, SNMP support, and bitmap support for faster rebuilding of RAID volume after a crash or adding/removing a drive.
The new 3.1 NAS management firmware ushers in a completely new AJAX based User Interface that allows easy NAS configuration via a Web interface allowing less technical-savvy users to easily install the NAS server on the network with simple wizards for adding new users, and setting up services. The new UI supports Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari (version 3 & 4), FireFox 3, and Google's Chrome web browsers. Administrators can choose from 3 different color themes, 15 languages, and even enable a QNAP RSS feed that will keep them up to date with important product news and updates.
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- Flash Memory
Dedicated to fulfilling the demanding requirements of performance-conscious photographers, Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, proudly releases its Extreme Plus 600X CompactFlash cards with Turbo MLC technology. These new 600X CF cards raise the bar with blazing fast transfer speeds of up to 92MB/s read and 87MB/s write, which makes them as ideal choice for professional photographers and enthusiasts who use digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras.
Transcend’s Extreme Plus 600X CompactFlash cards operate in quad-channel mode using Ultra DMA (UDMA) 6, the fastest speed available for flash cards. In comparison with 300X CF cards, this new version offers nearly double the read write speeds for unparalleled file transfer performance. Taking full advantage of the UDMA interface, Transcend’s 600X CF cards are able to instantly store extremely high-resolution image data, which makes consecutive shooting and non-stop video recording easier than ever. With impressive transfer speeds and enormous storage capacity, users are guaranteed to get the very best performance results from their digital cameras and share their digital artwork with the world!
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- Hard Disks
Strengthening its line up of portable 1.8” hard drives for external storage markets, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced its 250 Gigabyte (GB) 1.8 inch hard disk drive, the Spinpoint N3U which incorporates a native USB controller on its printed circuit board. This optimized design results in a smaller foot print, less power consumption and optimized performance, which is ideal for portable external storage devices. The Spinpoint N3U stores up to 125 Gigabytes per platter for a total 250GB data storage capacity.
Most external hard drives require the addition of a bridge circuit board to convert the hard drive’s PATA interface into a USB interface. Samsung’s N3U drive, however, uses a native USB interface and as such does not require this bridge board.
