Sony ships 'world's fastest' DVDÂ±R burner
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Claims 18x burn speed The first fruit of Sony's optical drive partnership with NEC have arrived in Europe: a drive the company claims is the world's fastest DVDÂ±R writer, capable of burning single-layer discs at up to 18x speed.â¦
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InfoWorld - The first laptop computer to feature an HD DVD-R drive, Toshiba&#39;s Qosmio Q30, went on sale in Japan over the weekend.
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Qosimo Q30, the first notebook with an HD DVD-R drive, begins selling in Japan over the weekend.
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Sony is developing a wireless data transfer system for gadgets that is capable of sending pictures, video, and data over a range of a few centimeters.Transfer Jet is based on a Sony-developed near-field communications system that the company envisages being built into a range of different portable consumer electronics devices to enable transfer without wires. Effective data rates of about 375Mbps&#160;over a 560Mbps physical layer can be realized with the system, which puts it faster on paper than USB2.0 and IEEE1394 FireWire interfaces.A prototype of the system is on show this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In a demonstration, a digital camera equipped with Transfer Jet and about 45 images was placed onto a version of Sony&#39;s photo reader box that also packed the technology. After a short pause, the images began transferring and within a few seconds the VGA-resolution images were inside the photo reader and could be viewed on a television.Sony clearly sees big things ahead for the technology. During a CES news conference Steve Haber, a senior vice president with responsibility for mobile and imaging products, said Transfer Jet &quot;could also play a key role for Sony moving forward.&quot;Transfer Jet has been under development by Sony for a couple of years and there&#39;s about a year&#39;s worth of work left before it&#39;s ready for the commercial market, said Kentaro Odaka, general manager of Sony&#39;s communication technology laboratory, in an interview.Odaka said the technology is based on a completely new near-field system developed by Sony that isn&#39;t related to its already-popular Felica system. Felica is widely used in smartcards across Asia but lacks the data throughput for more demanding applications. Transfer Jet uses a 4.5GHz system that is different but similar to ultra wideband, he said. The system has no security or encryption because it operates over a distance of a few centimeters.Sony gave a few hints on where Transfer Jet might turn up. In the demonstration at CES it is embedded into a digital still camera and digital video camera. &quot;Look for Transfer Jet technology in a variety of new products in the near future,&quot; said Haber.
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Sony has introduced a Mac compatible external double-layer dual-format DVD drive. The DRX-710UL-T comes with Roxio&#39;s Toast 6 Lite software and will be available next month.
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FRANKFURT/TOKYO  - German compact disc and DVD  equipment company Singulus and Japan's Sony have teamed up to  develop a new technology for music and video discs, Singulus  said on Tuesday.
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Rewriteable version of the next-gen DVD format moves closer to mass production.
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(InfoWorld) - Eighteen months after rival AppleÂ  raised the bar in the music player market with itsÂ video iPod, Sony will launch its first digital video Walkman. The NW-A800 series Walkman will initially go on sale in Europe in April. They'll appear later in other markets but timing hasn't yet been decided, Sony in Tokyo said Friday. For Europe there are three models: the NW-A805, A806, and A808. The only major difference is in the amount of flash memory, which is 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, respectively. The screen is a 2-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) panel with QVGA resolution (240 pixels by 320 pixels). It's orientated in portrait form rather than the landscape form used on the iPod, but videos can be viewed with the device either held vertically or horizontally, said Sony. Audio playback in a number of flavors of Sony's ATRAC compression is possible, and Sony supplies software for converting Windows Media Audio, MP3 and WAV files to ATRAC. It's also possible to directly load MP3 files onto the Walkman, but battery life will be shorter. For video the Walkman plays back MPEG4 H.264/AVC encoded files. Playback time on a fully-charged battery differs depending on the type of files. For audio its roughly 30 hours for ATRAC files encoded at 132KbpsÂ while for video its seven hours for MPEG4 files encoded at 768Kbps. Video files at lower bit rates will take up less space in the memory but also make the Walkman work a little harder on the decoding, so the time drops to about six hours and 30 minutes for a 384Kbps file, according to Sony's figures. The Walkman measures 44 millimeters wide by 88mm high and is 9mm thick. It weighs 53 grams. The NW-A805 is listed on Sony's online store for â¬180 ($237), the NW-A806 for â¬230 and the NW-A808 for â¬300. In comparison Apple's 30GB iPod costs â¬289 in Germany. The two products are difficult to compare on price alone, however, because the iPod has a larger screen and is also bulkier and heavier than the new Sony Walkman. Sony historians will note that the new product is not actually Sony's first Walkman to support video. That recognition goes to the GV-8 "Video Walkman" that was put on sale in August 1998 and played back Video 8 cassettes from camcorders. It cost Â¥118,200 (approximately $820 using the historical exchange rate). Â
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called &quot;HD DVD&quot; -- is in competition with the Sony-led Blu-ray disc to become the dominant next generation DVD. Toshiba said the HD DVD&#39;s strength against
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As Sony made official yesterday, the company plans to release four new Blu-ray Disc recorders in Japan on November 8, all of which will be capable of recording to dual-layer (50 GB) BD-R and BD-RE (erasable, re-recordable) discs. But a statement by the company's vice president for consumer electronics, Katsumi Ihara, was mistaken by US press sources in its translation to English as saying that the company plans to drop support for red-laser DVD-R recording, in all recordable consoles sold in Japan after November.
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The high-definition movie disc battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc can be traced all the way back to 2000, when companies began experimenting with using new blue lasers in optical disc systems.Because the wavelength of blue light is shorter than that of the red lasers used in DVD, less physical space is needed to record each bit of data and so more information can be crammed onto a DVD-sized disc. This extra space was needed to store the new high-definition video and TV services that were starting to be commercialized around that time.But what started in 2000 as technical research became a battle between the world&#39;s largest electronics companies and movie studios, with the consumer caught in the middle.Here&#39;s a look at the major milestones from the first research:2000Oct. 5 -- Sony and Pioneer unveil DVR Blue at Japan&#39;s Ceatec show. The format would go on to form the basis for first-generation Blu-ray Disc BD-RE.Nov. 1 -- Sony announces the development of Ultra Density Optical (UDO), a blue-laser optical disc format proposed to replace magneto-optical discs.2002Feb. 19 -- Led by Sony, nine of the world&#39;s largest electronics companies unveil plans for Blu-ray Disc.Aug. 29 -- Toshiba and NEC propose to the DVD Forum the next-generation optical disc format that will become HD DVD.Oct. 1 -- Prototypes of both formats are unveiled at Japan&#39;s Ceatec exhibition. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and JVC showed prototype Blu-ray Disc recorders while Toshiba showed a prototype under the name Advanced Optical Disc (AOD).2003Feb. 13 -- Licensing of Blu-ray Disc begins . Player makers pay US$20,000 to license Blu-ray while the content-protection system license carries a $120,000 annual fee and additional charge of $0.10 per player. Media makers pay $8,000 annually and $0.02 per disc for the copy protection system.April 7 -- Sony announces its Blu-ray Disc-based Professional Disc format for data archiving applications.April 10 -- Sony puts on sale in Japan the world&#39;s first Blu-ray Disc recorder, the BDZ-S77. It&#39;s based on a 23G-byte cartridge version of the BD-RE disc and costs &#165;450,000 (US$3,815 at the time). The machine and a later model from Panasonic lack support for prerecorded movies that will launch later and prove an expensive early step into next-generation video.May 28 -- Mitsubishi Electric joins the Blu-ray Disc group .2004Jan. 7 -- Toshiba unveils its first prototype HD DVD player at CES. The player includes backwards compatibility with DVD.Jan. 12 - Hewlett-Packard and Dell put their support behind Blu-ray Disc.June 10 -- The first commercial version of HD DVD-ROM is approved by the DVD Forum.Sept. 21 -- Sony announces the PlayStation 3 will use Blu-ray Disc.Nov. 29 -- Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO and New Line Cinema announce support for HD DVD .Dec. 9 -- Disney announces support for Blu-ray Disc.2005Jan. 7 -- Backers of both formats promise players and movies in North America by the end of the year -- something that never materialized.March 24 -- Talk and hope of a common format as Ryoji Chubachi, then Sony&#39;s president-elect, says: &quot;Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing and we haven&#39;t totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise.&quot;April 21 -- Sony and Toshiba begin discussions on the possibility of a single format. The talks ultimately go nowhere.Aug. 18 -- Lions Gate Home Entertainment and Universal Music Group decide to back Blu-ray Disc.Sept. 27 -- Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. put their weight behind HD DVD .Oct. 3 -- Paramount Home Entertainment says it will offer movies on both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.Dec. 16 -- Hewlett-Packard decides to drop exclusive support for Blu-ray Disc and back both formats .2006Jan. 4 -- Bill Gates announces at CES that Microsoft will offer an add-on HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 console.March 10 -- Blu-ray Disc-supporter LG Electronics surprises the industry with news that it&#39;s developing an HD DVD drive.March 31 -- Toshiba launches the world&#39;s first HD DVD player , the HD-XA1. It cost &#165;110,000 (US$936 at the time) in Japan.Nov. 11 -- Sony&#39;s PlayStation 3, which packs a Blu-ray Disc drive, goes on sale in Japan.Dec. 29 -- Hackers report success in breaking through part of the AACS copy protection that&#39;s on both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.2007Jan. 7 -- Seeking to end the battle, LG Electronics unveils a dual-format player, while Warner Bros. shows a prototype disc that holds both an HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc layer so is compatible with players for both formats.April 17 -- Sales of HD DVD players in North America hit 100,000 since launch.Aug. 1 -- Microsoft cuts the price of its HD DVD player for the Xbox 360 from US$199 to US$179 and starts offering five free movies.Aug. 20 -- Paramount and Dreamworks Animation both drop Blu-ray Disc in favor of HD DVD.Sept. 13 -- Sony says it will use Blu-ray Disc in all high-def video recorders in Japan.Nov. -- The price of Toshiba HD DVD players drops to US$100 with rebates as the holiday shopping season begins.Nov. 11 -- Sony begins selling a lower cost version of the PlayStation 3.2008Jan. 4 -- Warner Bros. drops its bombshell: it will stop issuing HD DVD movies in the coming months and rely exclusively on Blu-ray Disc. In response the HD DVD Promotion Group cancels its CES news conference.Jan. 6 -- Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, says at CES : &quot;We remain firm in the belief that HD DVD is the format best suited to the wants and needs of consumers.&quot; In response Sony CEO Howard Stringer, with a grin on his face, says &quot;All of us at Sony are feeling blue today.&quot;Jan. 14 -- Toshiba cuts the price of HD DVD players with the HD-A3 seeing a retail price of US$150.Feb. 11 -- NetFlix and BestBuy say they will phase out HD DVD.Feb. 15 -- Wal-Mart, the world&#39;s largest retailer, says it will phase out HD DVD by June.Feb. 16 -- Japanese public broadcaster NHK reports Toshiba has halted production of HD DVD players. Several additional local media reports confirm and The Nikkei business daily says Toshiba has decided to stop developing the format any further.Feb. 19 -- Toshiba formally announces it will&#160;phase out the production of HD DVD players and recorders&#160;by the end of March. The format war is over.(Dan Nystedt in Taipei contributed to this report.)&#160;
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DVD burner from Sony does just fine without a PC. Also: Virgin goes head-to-head with the iPod Mini.
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Ready for 'Santa Rosa' Fujitsu has introduced what it claims is the World's first 2.5in, 7,200rpm 3Gbps SATA hard drive, a notebook-oriented unit with a raw storage capacity of 160GB.â¦
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The new DRX-710UL-T allows users to record up to four hours of high-quality MPEG-2 video or up to 8.5 GB of data, music and/or images on compatible DVD+R DL media.
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Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) unveiled its first MP3-compatible, hard disk Walkman music player on Tuesday in an
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Sony Corp. (6758.T) said on Wednesday it  will launch a DVD recorder using Blu-ray technology by the end  of the year in Japan, fortifying its lineup of high-definition  optical disc products.
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Sony Corp. announced Tuesday a new 20 gigabyte digital music player with MP3 support that will be available in Great Britain and Japan before Christmas and elsewhere in Europe in early 2005.