At a recent press conference, Pioneer introduced its first hard drive equipped Blu-ray Disc recorders. Along with support for BonusView, the 1TB BDR-WD900 and 500GB BDR-WD700 offer 1080/24p output, dual digital tuners and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream output via HDMI. The recorders also support MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression technology, which allows them to store nearly 11 hours of HD video onto a 25GB Blu-ray Disc or, in the case of the BDR-WD900, about 450 hours on its built in hard drive.

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Pioneer Corporation announced today the introduction of the BDR-WD900, a Blu-ray Disc (BD) Recorder equipped with a 1-TB hard drive, and the BDR-WD700, a BD Recorder equipped with a 500-GB hard drive, for the Japanese market.

With digital terrestrial broadcasts becoming increasingly common, requirements of TV viewers are undergoing a change. Whereas previously viewers wanted to record as much high-definition content as possible, and as easily possible, they now want to record content in the highest quality possible. Thus, the market for BD recorders is rapidly expanding. Pioneer aims to meet this demand by launching its first HDD/BD recorders that can record two digital high-definition programs simultaneously for longer hours in the HD picture quality.

The Pioneer BD recorders BDR-WD900 and BDR-WD700 will be available in Japan in the early of October, 2008 (with no retail price suggested).

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For the last few years, Sony NEC Optiarc has operated as a joint venture between Sony and NEC. The two companies announced today that they have signed an agreement to transfer NEC's stock to Sony, making Sony NEC Optiarc a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sony group.

Sony Corporation (hereafter Sony) and NEC Corporation (hereafter NEC) today announced that they have signed an agreement to transfer NEC's 45% stock in Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. to Sony.
 
Sony and NEC separated their optical disc drive businesses and combined each company's respective strengths in the Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. joint venture, established April 3, 2006, with the aim of achieving further business expansion.

As a result of this agreement, Sony will make Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sony group, and will seek to strengthen its interaction with Sony group's product and device businesses to further streamline decision-making processes, enhance management responsiveness and further reinforce its next-generation optical disc drive business.

NEC will continue to contribute to the advancement of Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.'s optical disc drive products through the LSI development being carried out at NEC Electronics Corporation. 

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Intel announced this week that it has begun shipping its new X18-M and X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid State Drives (SSDs). The 1.8-inch X18-M and 2.5-inch X25-M are available in 80 GB capacities and are capable of 250MB/s read and 70MB/s write speeds.

Intel Corporation announced today it has begun shipping Intel® X18-M and X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drives (SSDs) based on multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash technology for laptop and desktop computers. The new high-performing data storage devices give computer buyers a new level of system responsiveness in a lightweight, rugged, low-power package that can replace traditional hard disk drives.

Validated for Intel-based computers, the X18-M is a 1.8-inch drive and the X25-M a 2.5-inch drive, offering several advantages over hard drives including faster overall system response, boot and resume times. With no moving parts, SSDs run cooler and quieter and are a more reliable option than hard drives. In addition, SSDs remove input/output (I/O) performance bottlenecks associated with hard disk drives that help maximize the efficiency of Intel processors, such as the company’s Core™ family of products. For example, lab tests show that the Intel X18-M and X25M increase storage system performance nine times over traditional hard disk drive performance.

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Toshiba recently announced its new 240GB 1.8-inch hard disk drive, the MK2431GAH. Developed for consumer electronics and PC devices, this dual-platter drive has an areal density of 344 gigabits per square inch, the highest in the industry. The MK2431GAH also spins at 4,200 RPM and features a 100MB/s parallel ATA interface.

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Toshiba Corporation, the pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today announced the world's first dual-platter 240GB1) HDD (MK2431GAH). The new drive delivers the highest capacity1) and areal density in the 1.8-inch drive category for integration into portable media players, camcorders and mobile PCs. Toshiba also announced new 120GB (MK1231GAL)  and 80GB  (MK8031GAL)  capacity offerings, rounding out the most complete line of high-capacity 4,200 RPM 1.8-inch HDDs for consumer electronics (CE) and mobile PC system manufacturers.

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After months of development, we have launched a new version of CDRLabs.com. The website now runs on an open source platform, which should allow us to be a bit more flexible than we were before and make it easier to add new features. It is still a work in progress, so please be patient as we bring new features online and work out  a few kinks. If you find a bug or want to leave feedback, please drop us a note in the forum.

- The CDRLabs Staff

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