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- Home Entertainment
SNL Kagan released a new study this week, forecasting the revenue growth in the retail home video business over the next decade. According to their study, Blu-ray player sales are expected to grow from $255.4 million in 2008 to $1.3 billion in 2010. SNL Kagan also projects that high-definition DVD will attain 73.8% market share by 2017. However, it will face some stiff competition from video-on-demand (VOD) services, which will improve in both technology and content over the next decade.
While the current impact of Blu-ray has been relatively minor (standard DVD still comprises 97.1% of the market), SNL Kagan projects that high-definition DVD will attain 59.7% market share in 2014, with $13.1 billion in revenue. By 2017, this figure is expected to soar to 73.8%, or $15.6 billion.
The SNL Kagan study points to 2010 as the start of the resurgence in retail revenue. Sales of Blu-ray players are expected to grow from $255.4 million in 2008 to $1.3 billion in 2010, reaching mass-market penetration and spiking to nearly $6.9 billion in 2013.
However, Blu-ray's unrivaled dominance may be short-lived, with video-on-demand (VOD) poised to become a major force in home entertainment after 2017. SNL Kagan estimates that there will be 98.8 million high-speed Internet homes capable of delivering VOD in 2017 compared to 115.2 million high-definition DVD homes.
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- Optical Storage
As a globally renowned manufacturer of computer peripherals and optical drives, ASUS is constantly at the forefront of cutting edge technologies, providing users with innovative solutions for everyday computing. In pursuing this philosophy, the new ASUS External Slim SDRW-08D1S-U utilizes user-centric design in the Scenario-Based Design model to better address the needs of the user. By integrating these needs into its development and creation, the ASUS External Slim SDRW-08D1S-U combines both aesthetics and practicality.
Sporting an elegant stand design and high glossy appearance showcasing excellent craftsmanship and quality, the ASUS SDRW-08D1S-U brings together high-speed data access technology and style with its attractive, vertical external DVD burner. A user-friendly software interface allows users to easily burn discs; allowing users to simply drag and drop data into the thumbnail layout when they are burning documents and media into a new disc. Drawing power from the computer and harnessing the transmission speeds of a USB 2.0 port, users can experience high-speed data transfer speeds while utilizing little power, perfect for the modern computing era.
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- Optical Storage
Today LaCie announced that it has doubled the speed at which its high-performance, large-capacity LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive burns discs to eight times (8x) standard data writing rates. The increased speed to burn files applies to both single and dual-layer discs. LaCie also has upgraded the authoring and backup software that ships standard with the product.
The LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive packs up to 50 GB of data, or four hours of high-definition video, on a single Blu-ray disc – making it an ideal tool for video professionals and anyone who wants to backup and store significant amounts of data on reliable removable media. It sports both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces for high-speed throughput between the drive and a PC or Mac.
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- Hard Disks
Seagate today introduced its Constellation(TM) family of new enterprise storage solutions for Tier 2 nearline storage applications. The two new drive models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security. Both drives also include PowerChoice(TM) from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments.
"The need for greater storage capacity will continue to expand in multiple directions and dimensions, but there will be an increasing scrutiny of all storage system purchases, with an eye to decreasing power consumption, footprint, and cost per GB in unprecedented ways," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points."
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- Flash Memory
Transcend sent out a press release today, announcing its new 192GB high speed 2.5-inch Solid State Disk (SSD) drive. This MLC-equipped SSD features a new controller and is capable of 150MB/s read and 90MB/s write speeds.
Transcend Information Inc. (Transcend®), the world’s leading manufacturer of memory products, is proud to release its all-new 192GB high speed 2.5-inch Solid State Drive (SSD). This SSD is made of reliable NAND flash memory that contains no moving parts, and therefore is not susceptible to mechanical failure resulting from vibration, shock or heat. Featuring a powerful new controller, Transcend’s MLC-equipped 192GB SSD far outpaces standard 2.5" hard drives, delivering exceptional sustained read/write speeds of up to 150MB / 90MB per second to guarantee fast throughput regardless of file size. With these high-speed transfer rates and virtually non-existent (0.2ms) latency, an SSD-equipped computer boots-up faster, games run more smoothly, and overall system responsiveness is improved. Moreover, this SSD’s industry-standard SATA II interface and 2.5" form factor allow easy and straightforward user installation in most notebook computers and mainstream PCs just like regular hard drives.
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- Other
Protect Software GmbH announced today that it has developed a new "managed copy" solution for DVDs. Instead of putting a digital copy on a separate DVD, Protect's LiveDigitalCopy system dynamically transcodes the actual DVD content. LiveDigitalCopy supports both Macs and PCs as well as a wide range of devices including iPods, phones, portable media players and game consoles.
Protect Software GmbH unveiled LiveDigitalCopy(TM), a new system that allows content owners to add dynamic format transcoding to their Video-DVDs. Unlike traditional "digital copy" solutions based on pre-encoded files on a separate DVD, LiveDigitalCopy(TM) performs a "managed copy" by dynamically transcoding the actual DVD content and transferring it to a wide variety of devices.
By using dynamic content transcoding it is possible to optimize the video and audio quality to the capabilities of the selected target device which leads to a significant increase of quality while avoiding incompatibilities.
The patented LiveDigitalCopy process currently supports PCs, Macs, Portable Media Players (WMV), iPod, iPhone, Windows Mobile-based phones (WMV), video-capable cell phones (3GP) and Sony PlayStation Portable.
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- Optical Storage
LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling announced today that it has reached its five-year milestone. Launched in January 2004, LightScribe is now licensed by over 100 PC, electronics, CD/DVD and software companies worldwide, with over 115 million LightScribe-enabled drives shipped to date.
LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling today announced its five-year milestone, with an expanded base of over 100 licensees that highlights broad adoption of LightScribe's CD/DVD labeling technology and reflects enthusiastic customer response worldwide. Over 115 million LightScribe-enabled drives have shipped to date and LightScribe represents approximately 40% of worldwide DVD writer sales with the installed base growing at approximately five million drives a month. Additionally, over one million LightScribe.com visitors a month are viewing LightScribe's Design Center and downloading Template Labeler, label designs, and Windows and Linux software development kits.
LightScribe -- a laser DVD/CD label burning technology found in many popular brands of DVD/CD burners, laptops and PCs -- gives people the ability to easily burn silkscreen-quality photos, graphics, images and text directly onto LightScribe CDs and DVDs. A simple title printed in normal mode will typically take a couple of minutes. A fuller disc image will take approximately 15-20 minutes. LightScribe CDs are available in gold, red, orange, yellow, blue and green.
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- Flash Memory
With more and more data centers seeking a reduction in the number of servers they use, the development of low-power 4Gb DDR3 has become critical in reducing data center costs, improving server time management and increasing overall efficiency.
For the new generation of “green” servers, the 4Gb DDR3’s high density combined with its lower level of power consumption will not only provide a reduction in electricity bills, but also a cutback in installment fees, maintenance fees and repair fees involving power suppliers and heat-emitting equipment.
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- Hard Disks
Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., a leading supplier of innovative computer products including hard disk drives, peripherals and biometric security solutions, today announced the development of new security technology to make its 2.5-inch encrypted hard disk drives (HDDs) support the Opal Security Subsystem Class (Opal SSC). Opal SSC is a new storage security standard announced on January 27, 2009 by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG)¹, an international organization involved in setting security standards for computing environments.
The TCG’s Opal SSC specification has been adopted as an international standard with the aim of creating more secure IT environments. When used in combination with supporting application software, HDDs that support Opal SSC enable sophisticated security solutions for a wide range of computing platforms, including notebook PCs.
The TCG recently standardized the Opal SSC specification for advanced security solutions in computing environments. As an active member of the TCG, Fujitsu led the formulation of the standard, and has subsequently developed technology for Opal based 2.5-inch HDDs with encryption features.
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- Flash Memory
Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today launched an SSD, offered in capacities up to 64GB, that was specially designed as an upgrade for the Asus S101 Eee PC.
The Windows® model of the S101 includes only 16GB of local storage, so Super Talent’s upgrade SSD offers the S101 user the opportunity to double or quadruple the storage capacity in his netbook.
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