With the world economy sliding into a depression, companies everywhere are facing difficult times. According to DigiTimes, Taiwan's optical disc manufacturers are being hit especially hard. Despite recent price hikes, CMC Magnetics and Ritek suffered net losses of NT$1.733 billion and NT$970.1 million, respectively, in the third quarter of 2008.

CMC Magnetics and Ritek, the top two Taiwan-based makers of blank optical discs, suffered net losses of NT$1.733 billion and NT$970.1 million, respectively, in the third quarter, according to their financial reports for the third quarter of 2008. However, CMC's third-quarter 2008 net loss shrank by 24.6% and Ritek's by 15.8% from the second quarter of 2008 mainly because the two companies increased their OEM prices for DVD+R/-R discs by about 10% in August, according to industry sources.

CMC and Ritek aren't the only disc makers losing money. Second-tier manufacturers Prodisc, Gigastorage and Princo also saw net losses per share for the first three quarters of this year.

Verbatim Europe recently announced its new external RAID hard drive. This two-disk solution offers both eSATA and USB 2.0 interfaces and can be configured in RAID 1 (mirrored) mode for extra protection or RAID 0 to access its full 2TB of storage space.

Verbatim is expanding its range with an external RAID hard disk offering 2 terabytes of storage. The 3.5-inch HDD offers the maximum storage and the fastest data transfer rates in RAID level 0 and continuous data storage based on mirroring in RAID level 1. The Verbatim RAID 2TB eSATA & USB 2.0 Combo is now available in retail outlets.

The market for external hard disks is characterised by three main trends: ever greater storage capacities, faster transfer rates and higher data security. "With our new RAID HDD we are offering all this, as well as giving users the option of customised configuration," says Kai Miroschnik, Business Development Manager HDD Verbatim EUMEA.

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Western Digital unveiled its new HD TV Media Player this morning. While lacking a built in hard drive, the WD TV HD Media Player lets users plug in up to two WD My Passport portable drives or other USB mass storage devices and play movies, photos and movies on their TV at resolutions up to 1080p.

WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced a simple way for consumers to play their stored digital content on their HDTV in Full-HD 1080p resolution. The WD TV™ Media Player connects to a user's TV or home theater and plays digital movies, music and photos from WD's My Passport™ portable drive or other USB mass storage device. The WD TV Media Player is available now at WD's online store (www.shopwd.com) and select retailers.

According to research firm IDC, nearly 334 million GB of photos and more than 3.1 billion GB of video will be stored on consumer desktop and laptop computers in 2008. The research firm expects that to increase to 400 million GB and 5.8 billion GB, respectively, by 2010.

These large personal digital libraries are all but trapped on users' computers. In order to play their content on their TV, consumers have struggled with clumsy solutions such as copying onto multiple CDs and DVDs or connecting their PCs to their TV via wires or complicated home networking solutions. The WD TV HD Media Player enables consumers to easily and elegantly access their high-definition content on the biggest screen in the home.

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Today, CDRLabs brings you an in depth look at Pioneer's new 20x DVD±RW, the DVR-116D. Offering some of the fastest DVD reading and writing speeds available, the DVR-116D is capable of 20x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. The drive also features internal mechanisms to reduce noise and protect against dust as well as support for Pioneer's new Optimum Write Speed technology.

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