Sony Creative Software today announced Blu-print 6™ Blu-ray Disc authoring application and the brand-new Z Depth™ 3D subtitle offset editing application. As one of the first professional 3D Blu-ray™ Disc authoring products available on the market, the upgraded Blu-print 6 will be capable of authoring 3D titles in accordance with the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) 3D Blu-ray disc specification to greatly enhance workflow capability for production facilities and professional video editors. Blu-print 6 allows for easy import of MVC encoded content along with support of 3D menu graphics and subtitle graphics. 3D Blu-ray Java integration also allows for user interactivity like BD-Live. To assist editors creating 3D subtitles, the new Z Depth application generates the required offset metadata file needed in a 3D BD project allowing editors to more accurately and easily position subtitles when creating 3D Blu-ray Discs.

"With the home entertainment industry, consumer electronics manufacturers and consumers eagerly awaiting the introduction of 3D on Blu-ray, Blu-print 6 and Z Depth 3D subtitle offset editing application will enable editors and disc authoring professionals to provide a seamless 3D viewing experience for home audiences," said Dave Chaimson, vice-president of global marketing for Sony Creative Software. "Given the precise balance of art and technology needed to produce 3D Blu-ray Discs, production professionals require powerful and specialized new tools like Blu-print 6 and Z Depth for Vegas Pro 9 to deliver content that exceeds the high expectations accompanying the excitement for 3D at home."

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Samsung Electronics today announced that its new Spinpoint MP4 2.5” internal hard drive offers the highest capacity, 640GB in 7200rpm premium mobile drives. Operating at a 7200rpm rotation speed and double cache size, the MP4 is ideal for high-performance mobile computing.

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“Demonstrating Samsung’s industry leadership in delivering advanced and high performing storage solutions, the Spinpoint MP4 offers the biggest capacity in what has previously been offered as an option for advanced data storage,” said H.S. Lee, vice president, storage marketing, Samsung Electronics. “The large capacity and productivity improvements in the MP4 drive make it an optimal solution for our notebook PC and slim-desktop customers.”

The combination of faster spin speed, double cache size and improved caching algorithms delivers approximately 30% enhanced performance with 7200rpm rotation speed over 5400rpm speed. Enhanced performance is what gamers, multi-taskers and enthusiastic users yearn for from their computing systems.

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Designer USB flash drive pioneer Mimoco is excited to unveil its newest line of STAR WARS MIMOBOT designer flash drives. Devoted to the film that started it all - STAR WARS: Episode IV A New Hope - the latest series of classic characters immortalized as USB flash drives includes astromech droid extraordinaire R2-D2 and the shooting-impaired Stormtrooper - both back by popular demand from the original STAR WARS MIMOBOT series. Two newcomers also join the 2010 series, including that scavenger of the desert, the Jawa, and the fan selection from the first-ever STAR WARS MIMOBOT Audience Choice poll - Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

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The completely redesigned Stormtrooper Unmasked MIMOBOT features a removable helmet revealing either Luke Skywalker or Han Solo beneath. Just as their "borrowed" uniforms provided perfect cover for the young heroes during the daring Death Star rescue, these Stormtrooper USB flash drives provide up to 16GB of "armored" protection for your digital life. Stormtrooper Unmasked MIMOBOT will be offered as a blind assortment character, with a 50% chance of uncovering either Luke or Han when the MIMOBOT helmet cap is removed. (Here's a hint: Luke is the one who's "a little short for a Stormtrooper").

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OCZ Technology Group, Inc. announced today the company’s plan to enter mass production of the Z-Drive R2 Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the second rendition of the original Z-Drive family. The Z-Drive R2 builds on the existing solution but provides greater performance and design flexibility due to the implementation of a series of optimized NAND modules.

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“Our 4th generation PCIe SSD, the Z-Drive R2, tackles the performance challenges facing enterprise IT professionals head-on” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “The Z-Drive R2 is a total solution that delivers exceptional performance over a wide of range of applications due to its superior sequential performance, making it a winner in both high IOP and high-throughput environments. In addition, it is the only bootable and field serviceable PCIe SSD option on the market today, and due to an innovative interchangeable module design, it enables low cost field upgradability and capacity increases giving storage architects unprecedented flexibility.”

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QNAP Systems today expanded their popular Business Series Turbo NAS lineup with the addition of a new 5-drive desktop model, the TS-559 Pro. The TS-559 Pro provides up to 10TB of storage (using 2TB hard drives and single disk volume/ JBOD configuration), has been certified as compatible with VMware's vSphere 4 (ESX 4.0) virtualization platform, ideal for departmental file sharing, storage, and advanced server applications in the office environment.

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The TS-559 Pro incorporates the Intel Atom D-510 1.66Ghz dual-core processor and includes 1GB of DDRII RAM, delivering exceptional performance and high reliability for multiple concurrent tasks and intensive data transfer with lower power consumption. Businesses of all sizes are able to enjoy the interoperability between VMware virtual machines and QNAP high performance storage to take the advantages of VMware cloud computing environments.

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WD announced today that it is now shipping WD VelociRaptor® 450 GB and 600 GB hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA family of hard drives. The new WD VelociRaptor hard drive is designed for blade servers, high-performance PCs, Mac® computers, professional workstations, as well as 1U and 2U rack servers that require a balance of high performance and capacity. As the only 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive on the market today, and a favorite amongst enthusiast and enterprise groups, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive now comes packed with twice the capacity and up to 15% performance increase over the previous generation.

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The most popular hard drive for high-performance enthusiasts who demand the ultimate SATA drive, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics that provide 24x7 durability under high-performance demands and packs up to 600 GB of capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The WD VelociRaptor drive is also available in the IcePack™ enclosure, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink – a factory customization that fits the drive into a standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps this powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop chassis and 3.5-inch HDD form factor enterprise chassis.

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Sony Optiarc America has released some details regarding its new slim external DVD writer, the DRX-S77U. This sleek and lightweight drive is capable of 8x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 6x DVD±R DL and 5x DVD-RAM writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 8x. The DRX-S77U does not appear to be USB powered. Hower, it comes bundled with Nero 9 and is available in a number of popular colors: black, white, pink and gold. No word yet on pricing or availability. As we find out more, we'll let you know.

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NU Inc, the leading company in portable solution, has announced its latest external Blu-Ray writer, EBR240. It is the slimmest portable Blu-Ray writer with USB bus power support in the world together with a maximum recording and burning speed up to BD-R 6X and BD-RE 2X.

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This new ultra-slim size Blu-Ray makes itself the best companion of laptop by offering at a weight only 380g with the dimensions of 155x141x18mm (WxHxD). It can be powered through an USB cable from the laptop instead of a traditional power adapter. This portability eliminates the trouble for power socket searching. Equipped with the latest Blu-Ray technology, EBR240 supports dual layer burning on storage and backup on BD or BD-RE disc and the capacity is five times compared to a dual layer DVD disc. In addition, the software supports recording and playback on DVDs and CDs

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The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced two new media specifications that use Blu-ray Disc technology to provide targeted functionality for commercial and consumer applications. The specifications for BDXL™ (High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs) and IH-BD (Intra-Hybrid discs) are expected in the next few months.

blu-ray logo.pngThe BDXL specification, which is targeted primarily at commercial segments such as broadcasting, medical and document imaging enterprises with significant archiving needs, will provide customers with write-once options on 100GB and 128GB capacity discs and rewritable capability on 100GB discs. The discs reach these capacities by incorporating three to four recordable layers. A consumer version of BDXL is also expected, particularly in those regions where BD recorders have achieved broad consumer acceptance.

“Professional industries have expressed a desire to find optical disc solutions that enable them to transition away from magnetic media for their archiving needs,” said Victor Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee chair. “Leveraging Blu-ray Disc to meet this need provides professional enterprises with a compact, stable and long term solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive data, video and graphic images using a proven and widely accepted optical technology.”

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inXtron has officially released their first SuperSpeed Hard Drive enclosure with USB 3.0. The device, which is called the SK-3500 U3 is designed to hold a 3.5" SATA hard drive and supports large drives over 2TB. The sleek aluminum enclosure features a large heatsink for passive cooling and is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.

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USB, the world’s best known and most commonly used computer peripheral interface has now been revamped to enable super fast data transfer speeds of up to 4.8 Gbps with the new USB 3.0 (aka SuperSpeed USB). That makes USB 3.0 approximately 10 times faster than USB 2.0. Check out this link for a look at how USB 3.0 compares to 2.0 and eSATA.

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