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BlockMaster, a leading provider of secure removable data devices, today launches SafeStick SuperSonic, which is 5x faster than any other device in the market, enabling users to transfer files and information securely in just a few seconds. SafeStick SuperSonic was put through its paces at the Ferrari Maserati Racing Day in Sweden on August 22nd, where BlockMaster zoomed around the track at speeds of up to 200 mph in the Maserati MC12. SuperSonic was tagged on the fastest supercars in the world to mark the release of BlockMaster's technological invention, which takes USB speeds to the max and AES256 hardware encryption further than it has ever gone before.
SafeStick SuperSonic revs up to 23Mbyte/s for write and 33Mbyte/s for read, providing lightning speed transfer of files. This move is designed to support the huge growth in rich media files, such as images and videos, being transferred onto USB flash drives for business use. It only takes between nine and 30 seconds to load, jetting ahead of competitive devices, which take up to a minute to load every time they are plugged in.
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Elecom Japan sent out a press release today, announcing its new ESD-IDSAA series of solid state drives. What makes this "nanoSSD" unique is that instead of taking up a drive bay, it plugs directly into one of the SATA ports on your motherboard. Elecom's new drive also gets its power directly from the SATA port. However, an auxiliary power cable is included in case it cannot get enough juice. The ESD-IDSAA series is available in 8GB (ESD-ID008SAA) and 16GB (ESD-ID016SAA) capacities and is capable of 75MB/s read and 30MB/s write speeds. No word on pricing or availability at this time.
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Roxio®, a division of Sonic Solutions® today launched Roxio Creator® 2010, a comprehensive upgrade focused on streamlining and accelerating the process of capturing, editing and enjoying personal video, including high-definition content. Building on Creator’s already extensive feature set for editing and sharing digital video, Roxio Creator 2010 now offers automatic smart encoding to dramatically decrease rendering times while maintaining optimum video quality, and leverages ATI Stream and NVIDIA® CUDA™ technologies to make project encoding up to five times faster. Creator 2010 also adds a range of Blu-ray Disc™ (BD) features including AVCHD Archiving, BD-RE on-disc editing, and complements its comprehensive Blu-ray Disc authoring capabilities with a new array of high-definition motion menus.
Roxio Creator 2010 also makes it easier to enjoy video on a range of mobile devices with a newly simplified and reorganized output display that enables users to quickly transfer videos that are automatically optimized for the display characteristics and playback features of their particular device. Adding to Creator 2010’s versatile video capabilities is a Web video capture feature that allows consumers to grab streaming video, such as user-generated content on YouTube®, for viewing offline on portable devices and DVD players.
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In 2009, Blu-ray title prices have declined rapidly and the pricing gap is narrowing, according to Futuresource Consulting’s price tracking service. The service shows that in February the average Blu-ray price for new release movies in the UK was £27.29. By the beginning of August this had dropped to £16.74 – a sizeable decline of 40%.
Catalogue pricing has also fallen, but not by such a significant amount. From an average price of £16.87 in February, this dropped to £14.25 in August; representing a decline of 15%. When looking at the average catalogue price across the three largest etailers, (Amazon, Play and HMV), the price drop is far more significant, with the average catalogue price hitting £11.22.
Back in Q4 2008, both in the USA and the UK the premium for purchasing a new release title on Blu-ray compared to DVD was between 30% and 80%. However, for catalogue BD titles this premium was considerably higher, and in some instances was as much as 300%. Although it has never been disputed that consumers will pay more for Blu-ray, the premium in the market in 2008 was clearly not sustainable.
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NEC Electronics today announced the availability of a new image-processing solution, the EMMA3TMSL/P system-on-chip (SoC) based on NEC Electronics' enhanced multimedia architecture (EMMA) platform. EMMA3SL/P SoC is a set-top box (STB) device compliant with H.264 high definition (HD), the next-generation image-compression standard, as well as the multi-format video support used for the increasing number of worldwide internet-protocol television (IP TV) STBs, such as DivX®, VC-1, and WMV. The new SoC is also the first among the company's EMMA products to support China's audio/video standard (AVS).
The EMMA3SL/P device is an image-processing SoC that integrates key functions needed to receive and decode digital broadcasts, including MPEG-2 HD audio/video decoders, transport-stream demultiplexers, as well as display controllers for enhanced display and graphics features.
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Active Media Products, manufacturer of SSDs and WWF series USB drives, today announced the new Executive I dual function ball point pen with USB flash drive that features a carbon fiber barrel for strength and style.
"In the Executive I we fused a high quality writing instrument with a USB storage device. Unlike other multi-function devices, this drive is sleek, elegant and well balanced. It provides two basic functions that most people use every day." commented Jerry Thomson, Active Media Products' vice president of sales.
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AeroCool V12 and Touch-2000 Fan Controller Panels @ TestSeek.com
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz AM3 Processor @ TweakTown
Canon PowerShot D10 Camera @ InsideHW
CoolerMaster Hyper TX3 Heatsink @ OCModShop
CoolerMaster Sileo 500 RC-500-KKR3-GP @ Benchmark Reviews
Corsair Hydro H50 Water Cooling Unit @ Metku
Kingston Data Traveler 200 32GB Flash Drive @ Everything USB
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64GB Solid State Disk @ TweakTown
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 Netbook @ ThinkComputers.org
Lenovo IdeaPad U350 Notebook @ Hardware Zone
Mophie Hard Case Plus for iPhone @ ThinkComputers.org
NZXT Sentry 2 LCD Touchscreen Fan Controller @ Benchmark Reviews
Patriot Memory PCXL25SR Convoy XL 2.5 inch Dual Hot Swappable RAID Enclosure @ Futurelooks
Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 @ HotHardware.com
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4770 Video Card @ I4U
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DivX, Inc., a digital media company, and NEC Electronics Corporation, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions, today announced a multi-year licensing agreement covering the integration of DivX Plus(TM) HD technology into NEC Electronics' 'Enhanced Multi-Media Architecture' (EMMA(TM)). NEC Electronics' EMMA chips are designed to power next-generation Blu-ray players, digital televisions (DTVs) and set-top boxes, to enable consumer electronics manufacturers to deliver a high-quality and comprehensive high definition digital media experience to consumers.
Only DivX Plus HD Certified devices support playback of DivX Plus content (H.264 video with AAC audio in an MKV file container) created with DivX(®) 7 software, while also supporting previous versions of DivX video up to 1080p and Hollywood content in the DivX format. Available on www.divx.com, DivX 7 software enables DivX Plus content creation.
Known for developing DivX Certified® devices that offer great performance, interoperability and visual quality, DivX gives consumers a complete digital media solution for enjoying highly compressed, high-quality Internet video from the PC to the TV and beyond. NEC Electronics is actively promoting EMMA chips for digital audio/visual (AV) appliances as a strategic business segment. Having released world's first digital broadcasting STB system-on-a-chip (SoC) in 1998 under the brand name "EMMA", the company has built a formidable range of successful AV SoC devices since then covering three main areas -- STBs, digital TVs and DVD recorders.
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OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today introduced the Zee USB 2.0 flash drive, perfect for users seeking a simple and portable way to tote their multi-media files and documents. For the on-the-go student, gamer, or professional, the OCZ Zee is the ideal companion for a busy digital lifestyle at an affordable price point.
“Designed for the consumer on the go, the compact Zee is an economical USB drive that makes it easy to transfer images, multimedia and essential data between multiple computers,” commented Alex Mei, CMO of the OCZ Technology Group. “The Zee is designed to be affordable to the complete range of consumers, and is available in large capacities up to 16GB yet is both lightweight and compact so that it highly portable.”
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Pegasys, Inc. the company that makes digital video easy, and DivX, Inc., a digital media company, today announced the availability of the newly updated version of TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress. The new update adds DivX® HD support for full HD output at video resolutions up to 1080p. The update is available now and is free for existing users. New users can download a trial version and find more information at the product webpage. Pricing for the full version of TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress starts from US $59.95.
"With the latest support for DivX HD, users can output in full 1920x1080p resolutions without the huge file sizes associated with HD video. With the versatility and portability of the DivX format, they can play DivX HD files on a number of DivX Certified® devices such as Blu-ray disc players, digital TVs or any computer," commented Tak EBINE, Pegasys CEO.
