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Leading manufacturers of optical discs and optical disc drives in Taiwan, in an attempt to promote the Taiwan-developed DVD format FVD (forward versatile disc), are developing PC-use FVD burners and FVD-R (write once) discs through cooperation with fellow makers in China, with volume production to begin next quarter at the earliest, according to Taiwan industry sources.If you'd like to read more, head on over to DigiTimes. Add a comment
Taiwan makers have offered FVD players and recorders (for movies mainly), and the next step to boost FVD is to offer PC-use burners and corresponding recordable discs, said chairman Der-ray Huang for the Taiwan Information Storage Association.
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Expect to pay a premium for Sony's dual layer BD-R media. With a suggested retail price of $48, they're more twice the price of single layer BD-R discs ($20). If you'd like to read more, Sony's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment
Sony Electronics has begun U.S. shipments of 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc recordable (write-once) media with AccuCORE technology.
The company also confirmed that it plans to start shipping 50GB dual layer rewritable BD media later this year.
"The arrival of 50GB Blu-ray Disc media is an important milestone in the evolution of this new format," said Mike Lucas, director of marketing for Sony Electronics' Media and Application Solutions Division. "The capacity represents more than four hours of HD quality video, at a 24 Mbps transfer rate, allowing users to take full advantage of Sony's Blu-ray Disc burners and VAIO desktop and notebook computers."
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Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC), the leader in digital media software, and Akimbo Systems, creator of the first Internet video-on-demand service for television, announced today a marketing and licensing partnership that will significantly expand the audience reach of the Akimbo Service. Akimbo will be integrated with Roxio Venue, Sonic's powerful media application, providing service access for the first time to a broad base of PC users and letting them easily browse, purchase, manage and enjoy Akimbo's growing selection of over 14,000 high-quality programs. In the future, Akimbo plans to also incorporate Sonic AuthorScript DVD-on-Demand technology so participating content partners can enable consumers to record downloaded entertainment to DVD.Under the agreement with Sonic, Akimbo will distribute Roxio Venue directly to consumers and through their service provider partners. Sonic will include Akimbo as a premier service provider in the retail version of Roxio Venue. More information can be found here. Add a comment
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While Memorex's HD DVD-RW media won't ship until the fourth quarter of 2006, their HD DVD-R discs are available now for a suggested retail price of $19.99. More information can be found here. Add a comment
Memorex, the leading brand of optical media at U.S. retail and a portfolio brand of Imation Corp. (NYSE: IMN - News), today announced it is shipping its highly anticipated HD DVD recordable media. Memorex HD DVD-R write-once discs support high-definition (HD) television and video recording with crystal-clear broadcast quality. Also ideal for consumers seeking to capture, save and share photos, music and data, the recordable Memorex HD DVD discs deliver up to three times the capacity of standard recordable DVD media and faster digital transfer speeds.
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The patent infringement law suits, Ciba Specialty Chemicals (CIBA) had filed against RiTEK Corporation and its European subsidiaries Conrexx Technology B.V. (also known as Traxdata), RME Manufacturing GmbH, and PrimeDisc Technologies GmbH has been settled, RiTEK Corporation and Ciba Specialty Chemicals Inc., have announced today. Ciba had sued RiTEK because it had found the dye supplied by some of RiTEK's suppliers, infringed Ciba's phthalocyanine and related CD-R media patents. Ciba holds worldwide patents for its advanced phthalocyanine dyes and disks, which include China and Taiwan, where RiTEK had produced the media. A RiTEK spokesperson commented: "We do not have plentiful knowledge about the dye technology. After a clarification from Ciba, we realize the importance of the technology within the Ciba dye in the dye industry. We regret that we had used for part of our CD-R production a dye from a local supplier that turned out to infringe CIBA's dye and media patents. After this incident we had instantly improved our internal processes to make sure that intellectual property rights are respected and switched back to Ciba's product."If you'd like to read more, Ciba's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment
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Advanced Media, Inc., manufacturer and marketer of the popular RIDATA brand of recordable CD and DVD media, flash memory cards and USB flash drives, has introduced its latest addition to its' rapidly growing RIDATA brand DVD media lineup. The new RIDATA DVD-RW 6X and DVD+RW 8X media features exceptionally fast write speeds for re-writeable media.Advanced Media's 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW discs are available now in packs of 25, 50 and 100. More information can be found here. Add a comment
"We are pleased to be able to provide the highest speed rewriteable DVD discs available on the market today. Our rewriteable DVD's have seven times the storage capacity of a CD-R for larger digital storage needs. RIDATA DVD+RW ensures high durability and reliability for a variety of recording situations, making it a versatile storage solution. These discs are ideal for data-intensive, high-performance data storage," remarked Harvey Liu, Advanced Media president. "Rewriteable discs can be used for recording and re-recording TV shows, movies, sporting events, digital photos, up to two hours of video, MP3 files and data."
The RIDATA rewriteable media will rewrite up to 1,000 times and are tested to keep data safe for more than 30 years for durable long lasting archives. RIDATA DVD's have become the optimal solution for copying high quality video, sound, and large capacity for both audio/video and PC systems. Rewriteable media from RIDATA is compatible with popular DVD readers and writers.
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Microsoft will launch external HD-DVD drives for its Xbox 360 at a retail price of US$200 by Christmas of this year, and Taiwanese games developers and gaming services providers indicated this this is a smart marketing strategy as compared with Sony's adoption of built-in BD drives for its PlayStation 3 (PS3).If you'd like to read more, head on overo to DigiTimes. Add a comment
External drives have more flexibility than built-in models, the companies pointed out, while adding that despite BD having a much larger storage capacity than HD-DVD, pre-installation of BD drives may decrease the market competitiveness of PS3 units.
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Vincent Bautista, Sony's product manager for data storage, told CNET.com.au that due to copy protection issues and lagging software development, the drive will only play user-recorded high-definition content from a digital camcorder, and not commercial movies released under the BD format.Personally, I think that CNET is misinterpretting Vincent Bautista's comments. It's not that the BWU-100A cannot play back commercial Blu-ray movies but rather it requires a graphics card and playback software that support HDCP. As we've found in our own testing, both are in short supply right now. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Bautista says that one of two reasons for this is the fact that commercial content is encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which can only be decrypted using a HDCP-compliant graphics card that offers DVI or HDMI connections. Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that support HDCP, this isn't yet possible.
The second reason, according to Bautista, is that BD playback software that can decrypt HDCP isn't "released as a saleable item yet". Today, the only HDCP-supporting BD playback application is the OEM version of Intervideo WinDVD BD that's bundled with Sony's VAIO VGN-AR18GP notebook. The AR18GP also offers an HDCP-compliant HDMI connector, which makes it capable of playing commercial movies without issue.
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The battle between two hyped formats for high-definition DVD will confuse shoppers and turn many of them off the whole technology, a London-based research firm predicted on Friday.Screen Digest also predicts that the two formats will co-exist until a combined solution becomes cost-effective. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Market research analyst Screen Digest also forecast that only $11 billion of the total $39 billion expected to be spent on video discs by 2010 in the United States, Europe and Japan will be generated by the competing high-definition formats, Sony Corp.-backed (6758.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) Blu-ray and Toshiba-supported (6502.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) HD-DVD.
"The net result of the format war and the publicity it has generated will be to dampen consumer appetite for the whole high definition disc category," Screen Digest analyst Ben Keen said.
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In this review we take a look at some of the features found on the BDR-101A and then see how it performs. Is Pioneer's new Blu-ray Disc writer in your future? You'll have to read the review to find out.
As usual, if you have any comments or questions about this review or the Pioneer BDR-101A, please post them in the forum by clicking the link below. Add a comment
Pioneer BDR-101A Blu-ray Disc Writer
