Over the last year or so, there has been a lot of hype surrounding solid-state drives (SSDs). Unfortunately, in many cases, they've come up short in regards to performance and power consumption. During SanDisk's second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and CEO Eli Harari blamed Windows Vista for many of these shortcomings, stating that the OS is not optimized for SSDs. Add a comment
Sony Creative Software has announced the availability of its new multi-codec video encoder. The BAE-VX1000 is 30% faster than Sony's previous model and offers a number of enhancements including support for all Blu-ray formats. Add a comment
Blu-ray Disc is quickly gaining popularity in Japan. According to PC World, shipments of Blu-ray players and recorders hit a record 122,000 units in June. The demand is expected to be even higher for the month of July due to the mid-year bonus that Japanese workers receive as well as the Olympic games in August. Add a comment
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With the U.S. economy on a downhill slide, you'd think that consumers would be cutting back on their home entertainment spending. Surprisingly, that's not the case. According to Video Business, consumers generated more than $10 billion in DVD and Blu-ray Disc sales during the first half of 2008. Of this, Blu-ray accounted for more than $200 million, up nearly 300% from 2007.
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Amazon launched a beta version of its new video on demand service this week. Aptly named Amazon Video on Demand, the service lets customers watch any of the 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them. There is no need to wait for the entire video to download, as with Amazon's existing Unbox service or Apple's iTunes.

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Sony announced this week that its next-generation Blu-ray Disc player is now available at retailers across the country. The BDP-S350 supports BonusView (picture-in-picture) and is BD-Live ready. Sony plans to release a firmware update that will enable BD-Live later this year.
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SanDisk recently announced its new SanDisk SD WORM (Write Once Read Many) memory card. Developed for professional uses such as police investigations, court testimony and electronic voting, the SanDisk SD WORM card prevents data from being altered or deleted once it has been record. The card can also be read in any standard SD slot and has an archival life of 100 years. Add a comment
Toshiba sent out a press release earlier today, announcing its new line of high performance 2.5-inch hard disk drives. These new drives offer a 7,200rpm rotation speed, 8MB buffer and 3.0Gbit/s Serial ATA interface. Toshiba has also reduced the seek noise of the 400GB MK4058GSX by 2dB for near silent operation.

Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of high performance 2.5-inch HDDs, including a low-noise flagship model that boosts areal density to 477Mbit/mm2 (308Gbpsi) to achieve a capacity of 400GB on just two platters, plus five drives that bring new levels of performance and 7,200rpm rotational speeds to the company’s full range of storage capacities.

Mass production of the 400GB MK4058GSX will start from September, targeting notebook PC and consumer electronic applications. Mass production of the 7,200rpm drives will start in August. The line-up includes the 320GB MK3254GSY and models with 80, 120, 160 and 250GB capacities.
If you'd like to read more, Toshiba's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment