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- Home Entertainment
Despite the growing popularity of on-demand digital distribution, a new report by the NPD Group has revealed that consumers still spend most of their home video budget on buying and renting DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. According to the report, consumers spent 88% on DVD and Blu-ray Disc purchases and rentals with only 12% going toward video on-demand, digital downloads and online streaming.
According to The NPD Group, a leader in market research for the entertainment industry, watching movies and other video content on DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) comprises the lion’s share of home-video acquisition and viewing, even as newer digital methods are beginning to gain a foothold in the consumer market. In fact DVD and BD sales and rentals represented 88 percent of consumer spending on home video content, based on a survey that asked about home video consumption over the previous three months.
Results from NPD’s March 2009 update to the “Entertainment Trends In America” consumer tracking study, which provides an in-depth look at shifts in entertainment consumption, revealed that the average U.S. home video consumer reported spending an average of $25 per month on all types of home video purchases and rentals. When it comes to spending on home video content: 63 percent was spent on DVD purchases; 7 percent on BD purchases; 18 percent on DVD/BD rentals from retail stores, subscriptions or kiosks; 9 percent on video on-demand (VOD); and 3 percent on digital downloads and online streaming.
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- Hard Disks
Addonics Technologies today announced a family of RAID enclosures built on Addonics’ tower platform and integrated with a combination of Addonics’ snap-in mobile rack, disk array, drive cartridge system and port multiplier. The new towers include the RAID Tower Mini, the RAID Tower II and the RAID Tower IV.
Each RAID Tower model comes bundled with everything needed to connect the drives to a PC or laptop. You can start with as little as one drive and expand to more capacity by adding more drives at a later time. On some RAID Tower models, you can mix and match different type of drives, all in the same RAID Tower unit, such as 3.5” SATA or IDE hard drives, 2.5” SATA or IDE hard drives or even a SSD (Solid State Drive).
Depending on the type of the built-in port multiplier inside the RAID Towers, the drives inside can be set up as an individual drive or to form a simple RAID 0 or RAID 1 to RAID 5 with hardware acceleration for fast read/write performance. Once the drives are configured, they can all be connected to a system via a single eSATA or USB connection.
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- Flash Memory
Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer technology, today announced the release of their "value add" bracket to be included in all future Warp and Torqx SSD drive purchases.
SSD drives have been predominately associated with mobile laptop computers. With 3.5” desktop drive bays, the standard SSD size of 2.5" is not currently an option for desktop owners. The Patriot SSD bracket clears that hurdle for desktop owners.
"Consumers are looking for options; our goal is to give them that opportunity to add new technology," says JR Wakabayashi, Patriot’s Marketing Manager. "By including the SSD bracket in all SSD purchases for the Warp and Torqx series, Patriot makes SSD an attractive choice for overclockers, gamers, and PC enthusiasts; a definite 'value add' for all consumers."
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- Optical Storage
Buffalo Japan has announced a new 24x DVD writer based on what appears to be a drive design from LG (GH24N?). The Serial ATA equipped DVSM-U24FBS is capable of 24x DVD±R, 12x DVD-RAM, 8x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. The drive can also upscale standard DVDs to 1080/60p using the bundled CyberLink PowerDVD 8 software. The DVSM-U24FBS will hit store shelves at the end of May for about 5,800 Yen ($60US).
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- Optical Storage
Plextor Japan announced this week that it will be releasing an external version of the PlexWriter Premium2 in early June. The Premium2U reads and writes at 52x, rewrites at 32x and sports an 8MB buffer. The drive also supports Yamaha's Audio Master Quality Recording system as well as many of Plextor's advanced technologies, including GigaRec, VariRec and Q-Check.
Plextor has not announced a price yet. However, the Premium2U is expected to run about 19,980 Yen ($207US). While I can't see myself dropping that sort of cash on a CD writer based on a three year old drive design, there are probably plenty of Plextor fans and audiophiles out there that will.
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- Home Entertainment
Denon Electronics, one of the world's premier manufacturers of high-quality home entertainment components, today introduced two high-performance Blu-ray products, each designed to make the benefits of high-definition video and audio more available and affordable. The company's new Blu-ray offerings include two Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players, the DBP-2010CI (SRP: $699) and DBP-1610CI (SRP: $499.) Both are scheduled for July 2009 availability.
Denon's new Models DBP-2010CI and DBP-1610CI are both geared for use in today's most advanced integrated home entertainment systems. Among their innovative interactivity features, both include built-in BD Live and Bonus View functionality. For easy connectivity to both a host of current-day and future entertainment enhancements, the new models both feature onboard Ethernet port that allows for Internet connectivity for BD Live and firmware updates. Adding to their video handling capabilities, both models offer DivxHD playback and support AVCHD playback from BD discs made from HD camcorders.
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- Flash Memory
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, announced shipment of its 32-Gigabyte (GB) moviNAND™, the highest density embedded memory card utilizing advanced 30-nanometer (nm) class process technology. Use of high-density embedded memory improves the performance of high-end phones and other mobile consumer electronics when processing and storing large amounts of multimedia content such as videos, video games and TV broadcasts.
The 32GB moviNAND is the first embedded memory card to use 32 Gigabit (Gb) NAND devices produced with 30nm-class process technology. The new Samsung card doubles the density of the previous generation of moviNAND that is now being produced with 16Gb 40nm-class NAND chips.
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- Flash Memory
TDK Corporation announced today the launch in late May 2009 of the SDG2A series of serial ATA(SATA) II compatible industrial solid state drives(SSDs) with a maximum memory capacity of 64 GByte.
These products are industrial SATA Flash discs equipped with GBDriver RS2 SATA controller ICs developed by TDK. They support high-speed access with an effective read speed of 95 MByte/second and effective write speed of 55 MByte/second. They also feature powerful error correction capabilities scalable to 15-bit/sector ECC(error correction code), providing high levels of data reliability. The use of an internal power supply protection function prevents errors in the event of a power interruption. These SATA drives are also equipped with an auto-recovery function that automatically recovers data when read disturbance errors occur from repeated reading of data, making them ideal for use on automotive application such as car navigation systems.
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- Flash Memory
Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced the launch of the Corsair Storage Solutions P256 high-performance 256GB solid-state drive (SSD).
The Corsair Storage Solutions P256 has been designed using cutting-edge technology to deliver the highest performance and compatibility, in a capacity that is big enough to replace conventional storage solutions in a high-performance PC. The P256 uses specially selected Samsung MLC flash memory and a sophisticated Samsung Controller IC, coupled with 128MB of super-fast cache memory and Native Command Queuing (NCQ) support for blistering, stutter-free performance, delivering read speeds of up to 220MB/sec and write speeds of up to 200MB/sec.
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- Flash Memory
Silicon Power, the leading brand among Solid State Disk (SSD) Manufacturers today launch a new product of 256GB 2.5 inch SATA II SSD M10. The Silicon Power M10 dimensions are that of a standard 2.5 inch hard disk drive. Featuring dual interface, USB and SATA II, it can be installed internally or used as an external hard drive. When used as an external hard drive, the aesthetic design suits the fashion conscious consumers that want the looks, reliability and yet not compromise on performance.
M10 can also be easily installed into your desktop computer or laptop through its SATA II interface. Utilizing 2.5 inch hard drive dimensions, M10 also comes with a mini USB connection for you to use as an aesthetic external storage device. Unlike traditional hard drives, it has no mechanical moving parts. The M10 is reliable, consumes minimum power, has no operation noise, features high transfer rate, shock and vibration proof.
