Reuters recently interviewed the president of Sony Electronics' U.S. operations, Stan Glasgow. In the interview, Glasgow stated that Blu-ray player sales have fallen short of Sony's expectations. Along with the tough economy, player sales have been hampered by the high price of Blu-ray titles.

High definition Blu-ray disc players may be one of the holiday season's best sellers, but they will still fall short of expectations, due to the tough economy, the head of Sony's U.S. electronics unit said.

Sales of the next-generation movies players, developed by Sony and sold under brands including Panasonic and Samsung, could benefit from a late shopping spurt as budget conscious U.S. consumers find deals, Stan Glasgow told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

But they will not meet the worldwide target of 5 million units, most of which had been expected to sell in the United States.

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Samsung announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 GB solid state drives (SSDs). According to Samsung's claims, this new 2.5-inch SSD offers twice the performance of its 64GB and 128GB SSDs. The drive is capable of 220 MB/s read and 200 MB/s write speeds, allowing it to store 250GB worth of high-def movies in just 21 minutes.

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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs. With the addition of the high-speed 256GB drive, Samsung now offers the most extensive line of SSDs in the industry with 8, 16, and 32GB SSDs for low-density designs and 64, 128 and 256GB alternatives for the higher densities.

The new 256GB SSD more than doubles the performance rates of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs to become the SSD with the highest overall performance in the personal computer industry, combining sequential read rates of 220MB/s (megabytes per second) with sequential write rates of 200MB/s. This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 and 70 percent for other SSDs. In addition, erase cycles are a rapid 100GBs per minute, allowing the entire drive to be re-written much faster, when needed.

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The USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced on Monday that it has completed version 1.0 of the USB 3.0 specification. This new technology, called SuperSpeed USB, is about ten times faster than the 2.0 specification. The first SuperSpeed USB controllers are expected to appear in the second half of 2009 with the first consumer devices becoming available in 2010.

superspeed usb.jpgThe USB 3.0 Promoter Group today announced the completion of the USB 3.0 specification, the technical map for device manufacturers to deliver SuperSpeed USB technology to the market.

SuperSpeed USB brings significant power and performance enhancements to the popular USB standard while offering backward compatibility with billions of USB-enabled PCs and peripheral devices currently in use by consumers. Delivering data transfer rates up to ten times faster than Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0) with optimized power efficiency, SuperSpeed USB is the next step in the continued evolution of USB technology.

“SuperSpeed USB is the next advancement in ubiquitous technology,” said Jeff Ravencraft, USB-IF president and chairman. “Today’s consumers are using rich media and large digital files that need to be easily and quickly transferred from PCs to devices and vice versa. SuperSpeed USB meets the needs of everyone from the tech-savvy executive to the average home user.”

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Kanguru Solutions sent out a press release today, announcing the release of the Kanguru e-Flash. This high-performance flash drive is available with 16GB or 32GB of storage and features both eSATA and USB connections. According to the specs on Kanguru's website, the e-Flash is capable of 75MB/s and 25MB/s write speeds when connected to a computer via eSATA.

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Kanguru Solutions, announces the release of the Kanguru e-Flash™, a cutting edge flash drive with both eSATA and USB connectivity.

Utilizing eSATA (External Serial ATA) technology allows the Kanguru e-Flash to achieve performance speeds never before obtainable with standard USB Flash Drives. This performance, coupled with large storage capacities means the Kanguru e-Flash can handle any application or data file, regardless of size. In addition to eSATA, it also contains a USB2.0 connection for universal connectivity to virtually any computer.

The Kanguru e-Flash has a powered eSATA connection so it doesn’t require any additional power source. It also comes packaged with an eSATA + Power bracket and an eSATA + Power cable for easy hookup to the computer you use it on most. Capacities are available in 16GB or 32GB with 64GB planned for January 2009.

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Plextor LLC has finally revealed some details on its new Blu-ray combo drives. The internal PX-B310SA and external PX-B310U read single layer Blu-ray discs at 6x and are capable of 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 12x DVD-RAM writing speeds. The two drives also support Plextor's new PlexUTILITIES software as well as its PlexERASE and PlexREAD technologies.

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No word yet on availability. However, if preorders are any indication, you can expect to pay about $240 for the PX-B310SA and $290 for the PX-B310U.

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