While Blu-ray still has a long ways to go before it overtakes the DVD, a new report issued by The NPD Group shows that the format is moving further into the mainstream. According to NPD's latest point-of-sale tracking data, first quarter sales of stand-alone Blu-ray players in the U.S. grew to more than 400,000 units, an increase of 72 percent over Q1 2008. Consumer awareness also reached 90 percent with 6 percent of those surveyed stating that they would be “extremely or very likely” to buy a Blu-ray player in the next six months.

According to the latest point-of-sale (POS) tracking data from The NPD Group, a leading market research company, Blu-ray Disc (BD) video technology is moving further into the mainstream. First quarter (Q1) sales of stand-alone Blu-ray players in the U.S. grew to more than 400,000 units, an increase of 72 percent over Q1 2008. Dollar sales increased 14 percent, to reach $107.2 million according to NPD’s retail tracking service.
                                                     
"The rising penetration of high-definition televisions and lower Blu-ray player prices are broadening the format’s market opportunity," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD. "Even as options expand for accessing movies digitally, Blu-ray is carrying forward the widespread appeal of DVD into the high-definition marketplace."

NPD’s “Blu-ray Report” March 2009 update revealed that overall consumer awareness of the BD format in the United States has reached 90 percent awareness in the past six months.  Purchase intent for Blu-ray set-top boxes also rose slightly in NPD’s most recent tracking surveys, with 6 percent of respondents saying they would be “extremely or very likely” to buy in the next six months, compared with 5 percent who responded similarly in the August report.  Despite these high awareness levels, more than half of adults (58 percent) continue to report that they were still “not very familiar” with BD. 

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LaCie announced today the availability of two new high capacity Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions – Big Disk Network and d2 Network. These professional file servers are optimized for users to instantly store, share, and back up files, from any PC or Mac on a wired or wireless network. LaCie’s new NAS solutions deliver high-performance and professional-class reliability, in an easy-to-use network solution for the home or small office.

The d2 Network supports up to 1.5TB capacity, while the Big Disk Network combines two drives in a RAID 0 setting, for up to 3TBs of storage. Both NAS solutions are perfect for advanced users or small to medium sized offices that want to develop workgroup environments for up to 50 users (15 at one time). Network administrators can choose from various security levels for user profiles, groups, and public or guest access. Users can connect an external USB drive to increase security through scheduled backups, or even expand capacity. The d2 Network also includes an eSATA connection for storage expansion.

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QNAP Systems, Inc. today launches the 2-bay Intel Atom-based TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS with iSCSI target service for SMB and SOHO users. Adopting the low power Intel 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, and DOM (Disk on Module) architecture, the TS-239 Pro delivers outstanding system performance in data intensive business environment. The NetBench test result shows the TS-239 Pro delivers an extremely high throughput of over 350MBit/s when 20 clients are accessing the NAS simultaneously, which is 3 times faster than other NAS brands in the same class. With the support for two 2TB hard drives, hot-swappable disk trays with locks, two Giga LAN ports, three USB 2.0 ports, and two eSATA ports, the NAS has become the top-class 2-bay NAS model with the best specifications and of the highest scalability, redundancy, storage capacity, and stability in the current market.

The TS-239 Pro supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX OS. Advanced features such as built-in iSCSI target service (max 8 iSCSI devices) with Thin Provisioning, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, Online RAID Level Migration, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, Wake on LAN, automatic policy-based IP blocking, instant SMS and email alert, BT and EMule download, schedule power on and power off, two IP cameras for network surveillance are also available.

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DDRdrive LLC introduces the DDRdrive X1, a PCI Express expansion card featuring a complete solid-state storage system. The DDRdrive X1’s breakthrough architecture integrates both DRAM and NAND to transform direct-attached enterprise storage. Singularly designed to target IOPS intensive applications while setting a new standard in performance, power, and price. The DDRdrive X1 is “The drive for speed”.

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