According to various reports, the U.S. Justice Department has begun to look into possible violations of antitrust law in the optical disc drive industry. Along with Sony Optiarc America, Hitachi and Toshiba have now received subpoenas from the DOJ which is seeking information about the companies' optical disk drive businesses.

Japanese technology giants Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday that, like Sony Corp., their optical disk drive operations in the U.S. have received subpoenas from the Department of Justice in a widening investigation into potential antitrust violations.

According to a person familiar with the investigation, the Justice Department started a criminal antitrust probe into the market for optical disk drives in recent months, investigating disk-drive makers for possible price-fixing, bid-rigging and allocation of markets. As well as featuring in personal computers, optical disk drives are used in everyday consumer products like DVD and Blu-ray disk players.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Multimedia Players today expanded their Turbo NAS lineup with the addition of the TS-410U rack-mounted NAS server targeted specifically at the SMB and workgroup market segments. The TS-410U features 4 hot-swappable SATA hard drives with up to 8TB of total capacity (with 2TB drives) packaged in a compact 1U rack-mounted chassis. The TS-410U supports 2.5" or 3.5" hard drives, giving users more flexibility in selecting hard drives for installation.

The TS-410U features a Marvell 800MHz CPU and 512MB DDRII memory which provides sustained high performance with low power consumption. The TS-410U can be configured for RAID 0/1/5/6/5+ spare, and JBOD with online RAID capacity expansion and online RAID level migration for high data redundancy. The TS-410U also supports iSCSI Target service with Thin Provisioning and dual Gigabit LAN ports with failover and load-balancing, features generally found on much higher end NAS servers. The TS-410U also features 4 USB ports (1 front, 3 back panel) and 2 e-SATA ports for expanding the storage capacity or backing up the TS-410U. The front USB port incorporates a unique "Auto-copy" feature that is activated by a button on the front panel of the TS-410U and will copy the contents of a USB device connected to the front USB port to the NAS.

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Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the release of the SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive, the latest addition to its V (Value) family of solid-state drives (SSD). The Kingston® SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to accelerate any desktop's boot, shutdown and application load times. It is available for as low as $84.99 after rebates (U.S. only) at e-tailer Newegg.com at launch.

"The SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive offers instant performance enhancement coupled with reliability and lower power consumption at a fraction of the cost of a new system," said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. "The 40GB Boot Drive is the latest offering in our V Series SSD line. It provides a low-cost upgrade solution that complements the installed hard-disk drive to extend the life cycle of existing desktop computers and workstations in homes and offices."

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Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (SCEA) and Netflix, Inc. today announced that they are joining forces to make thousands of movies and TV episodes from Netflix available to be streamed instantly to TVs via the PlayStation®3 (PS3(TM)) computer entertainment system. Netflix expects to begin streaming via the PS3 system next month at no additional cost to Netflix members in the United States who have a PS3 system.

Today's announcement pairs two of the most popular and fastest growing home entertainment brands in the U.S. The PS3 system's installed base has reached close to 9 million units in the United States, and Netflix recently reported 11.1 million U.S. subscribers as of September 30.

The partnership further solidifies the PS3 system as the most complete home entertainment hub on the market today, enabling consumers to play high-definition games, watch Blu-ray movies, listen to music, view photos, browse the Internet, and download content from PlayStation®Network - from exclusive games to blockbuster movies and popular TV shows. PS3 system owners will soon enjoy an unparalleled experience watching their favorite movies and TV shows streamed instantly from Netflix, downloading from the PlayStation Network or watching Blu-ray/DVD media. The Netflix offering expands on the entertainment experience delivered to PS3 system owners via PlayStation Network.

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