Sony recently launched beautifully styled HDD Recorders RDR-HX1080 for its BRAVIA TV. Control the entire home cinema system and your favorite TV shows with one remote control.

"Aside from great picture quality and huge storage capacities, the latest generation of Hard Disk Drive DVD recorders makes the ideal partner for your BRAVIA(TM) television", says Stuart Kemp, Business Manager, Home Video Group, Sony Europe. "And now with advanced features like BRAVIA(TM) Sync, these brilliant recorders can be integrated seamlessly into your complete home entertainment set-up — all controlled from a single remote".

You can easily store 1420 hours of TV programs on 500 GB drive, pause live broadcasts, time shift your favorite shows and chase playback. Apart from all this, you can also store camcorder footages, digital pictures, CDs and MP3 music. Create your personal slide shows using X-Pict Story.

Integrated DVB-Tuner enables you to view and record digital broadcast. Electronic programme guide, time shifting features, USB PictBridge ports, Bravia Sync and SD HDD Handycam connection makes it versatile. Though the price has not been disclosed yet by Sony, it will surely be worth the money paid.

Via: Sony

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, has recently introduced its two new hard drives, the CinemaStar C5K320 and the CinemaStar 5K500. The first model sports a 2.5-inch hard drive, while the second model sports a 3.5-inch hard drive. Optimized for today’s advanced home theater systems, these new hard drives provide high-capacity storage for set-top boxes and media center PCs.

“Hitachi CoolSpin drives deliver a substantial power savings over their desktop-class counterparts, simplifying CE product design and paving the way for a new class of set-top boxes and DVRs that are smaller, quieter and more reliable for consumers,” said Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD Marketing and Strategy, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Hitachi’s new CinemaStar 5K500 features 2 platters, 4 recording heads, 1.2 hours targeted Mean Time Between Failure and 2.2 Bels typical idle acoustics. This new product from Hitachi uses 3.2-watt idle power and 2.7-watt low power idle. It comes with 500 GB memory and 70 G operating shock and 350 G non-operating shock.

The CinemaStar C5K320 features 2.4 Bels typical idle acoustics, 729 Mb/s max. media transfer rate and 5,400 RPM. It uses 1.8-watt read/ write power and 1.7-watt idle power. It comes with an 8 MB data buffer, fluid dynamic bearing spindle motor and 1000 G non-operating shock.

Both the new products from Hitachi, the CinemaStar 5K500 and CSK320 are expected to be shipping worldwide in June 2008.

Via: Press

WD has announced the sale of its latest WD My DVR Expander External Hard Drive for DISH Network ViP Series HD DVRs. This HDD comes with a capacity of 500 GB letting the users store up to 300 hours of HDTV programming.

"WD’s My DVR Expander provides an ideal complement to the innovative archiving feature of DISH Network’s award-winning line of ViP HD DVRs," said Jessica Insalaco, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for DISH Network. "Combined with the already industry-leading storage capacity of our DVRs, DISH Network customers can create and control their own on-demand programming — reinforcing DISH Network’s leadership in digital entertainment."

These cool drives use up an eco friendly cooling system and boast GreenPower(TM) technology. They take up less power as compared to other HDDs. You can get these drives at $149.99 USD.

Via: Press

Iomega brought forward the latest ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive that lets you say your PC bye. It brings your multimedia content to high definition TVs and home theater systems. It has a capacity of 500 GB and can store upto 2 million photos, 9,250 hours of music, or 750 hours of video.

Loren Bryner, ScreenPlay product manager, Iomega Corporation said “The ScreenPlay Drive is a great solution for Windows users — there’s no better way to leverage a big-screen LCD or plasma TV investment. The combination of ScreenPlay and today’s televisions give users a seamless way to show off family photos, play music, and enjoy their videos from the best seat in the house.”

The ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is accompanied with a remote control. It facilitates navigation. The HDD equips HDMI and component video outputs to deliver high-resolution digital photos and video.

Weighing two pounds the HDD comes in the size of paper book. The Iomega ScreenPlay USB 2.0/AV in 500GB capacity is available for immediate sale in the America for $209.95. However, it will ship in the International Markets during May for Euro 179.99.

Seagate Technology recently launched its Cheetah 15K.6 full disk encryption hard drive. Specifically designed for storage arrays and mission critical servers, it is the world’s first self-encrypting hard drive. Take the hard drive anywhere in the world and encryption moves with it.

Mission critical enterprise data can now be secured as self encryption not only secures the data but also manages it and delivers improved performance. There is no need to change the operating system, databases or applications to encrypt it. Instantaneous Key-Erase technology ensures quick and secure removal.

Data center information security is benefited by self-encrypting drives. “Many organizations are considering drive-level security for its simplicity in helping secure sensitive data through the hardware lifecycle from initial setup, to upgrade transitions and disposal,” said Eric Ouellet, research vice president, Secure Business Enablement, Gartner. Though the price of the hard disk is not yet disclosed, it is surely going to set standards in security environment.

Via: Press

STX recently released the Barracuda ES.2 SAS 1 TB HDD to offer benefits to the business class. No other SATA HDD in the market is full duplex and dual-port. Barracuda ES.2 offers 10 times greater reliability as compared to the desktop family drives. It therefore, is energy efficient. Barracuda ES.2 class consumes approx. 20% less power as it is incorporated with Seagate’s PowerTrim™ technology.

“With the added enterprise features found within SAS all merging into a lower-cost package, we anticipate our customers will be very interested in building and deploying SAS-based systems with Seagate® drives.”

In order to hold its performance in multi drive schemes, new RVFF™ (Rotational Vibration Feed Forward) arrangement is designed with its accessibility of uptime data. It is backed with a warranty of five-year.

Quick specs:

• Capacity: up to 1TB
• Functions at: 7, 200-rpm spin speeds
• Average seek: 8.5ms
• Capacity: 500GB and 750GB

Via: Press

Sentry Group, one of the most renowned names in the field of small office as well as residential security storage containers, has announced its partnership with Maxtor(R) Storage Solutions on November 13, 2007 at New York City. The partnership is aimed at the development of world’s 1st affordable hard drives that is competent to protect critical data against fire, water, theft and computer crashes.

Maxtor’s latest SafetyDrill(TM) software is capable of an almost complete instantaneous restoration of PC’s operating system even during the time of an unforeseeable crisis.

It will not help to secure and back up the data but also would be beneficial in protection against common threats to PCs such as natural disasters and disk crashes. The hard drive is protected with an effective fireproof and waterproof enclosure that is ETL verified.

The Sentry(R) Safe FIRE-SAFE(R)/Waterproof Hard Drive is available in two size formats of 160GB and 80 GB at MSPR $319.99 and MSPR $259.99, respectively.

Via: Prnewswire Press

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the global forerunner in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital convergence technologies and advanced memory technology, recently introduced its latest 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch 64Gigabyte (GB) solid state drives (SSD) with a super-fast SATA (Serial ATA) II/native SATA interface. These SSDs comes with a sequential write speed of 100 (MBps) and sequential read speed of 120MBps.

The new SATA II SSD has a 3.0 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) interface speed which is two times as quick as its SATA I predecessor and also the SATA II SSD need merely 50% as much power as the 1.9 watts consumed by hard drives currently used in notebook PCs. Samsung would always remain a global leader in the creation of higher-density solid state drives, inventing a 32GB PATA SSD in last year March after which it created a 64GB version using the SATA I interface in this year March again.

The market research firm Web-Feet Research calculates approximately that the NAND flash-based SSD market is anticipated to show 74 percent compounded annual expansion from 2007 through 2012. Samsung has not revealed any information on the price range and date of availability of these 64GByte SATA II SSDs till now, so stay tuned till our next updation.

Via: Newswire Press

BiTMICRO unveils its latest E-Disk Altima E2A3 416GB 2.5-inch SATA Flash Disk Drive in the SSD Industry. The New SATA Disk boasts of 3Gb/sec Burst Rate. This intelligent flash SSD can sustain transfer rates of up to 100MB/sec, making it ideal for mobile computing, embedded and networked storage solutions. The company has announced it will commence the shipping of its E-Disk Altima E2A3 from Q2 2008. The disk is supported by the EDSA DMC and LUNETA MFI ASIC. The E2A3 has the capacity to withstand shock and vibration up to 1,500 G and 16.5 Gs.

Via: Businesswire

Hitachi’s storage unit Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) recently debuted world’s most energy efficient desktop hard disk the Deskstar P7K500 with 7200 RPM Performance and 250G-Per-Platter Capacity Ideal for Power-Friendly PCs. The latest HDD employs power-saving technologies reducing active and idle power consumption by up to 40 percent.

The Deskstar P7K500 boasts of Serial-ATA interface. The Deskstar P7K500 is scheduled to be available in high volume later in 4Q 2007. Hitachi GST’s HDD is engineered for commercial and consumer PCs. It will be available in capacities ranging from 250GB to 500GB. The latest HDD is up to 59 percent more power efficient than 250GB hard drives in its class with similar specs.

Features of Deskstar P7K500

• 185 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density
• 2/1 platters, 4/2 recording heads
• 1138 Mb/s max. media data rate
• 7200 RPM, 4.17 ms average latency
• PATA-133 and 3Gb/s SATA
• 8 MB (single disk)/8MB and 16MB (two disk) data buffer
• 26.1 mm in height (max)
• 550 in weight (max)
• 350 G/2 ms non-operating shock
• 3.6/4.8 watt idle power