Matsushita zal volgende maand in Japan haar DVD-RAM drive introduceren die gebruik maakt van de tweede generatie DVD-RAM techniek. Op de nieuwere DVD schijfjes kun je dan 4.7GB aan gegevens wegschrijven . De prijs is wel wat hoog, namelijk 2300 dollar voor de consumer versie. Een maand later zal Matsushita interne en externe PC versies introduceren die aanzienlijk goedkoper zijn; 580 en 684 dollar.
If today's CD-ROM disc capacity of 650MB is too meager for your storage needs, you might watch for some upcoming drives from Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Company. It promises a whopping 9.4GB of storage on a double-sided disc.
The company plans to launch this summer a line of high-capacity drives under its Panasonic brand. The products are based on a second-generation version of the DVD-RAM format.
The DVD-RAM technology is still battling for market acceptance against increasingly popular CD-Recordable and CD-Rewritable drives. The company hopes a new consumer video optical disc recorder arriving in June and two new drives for the PC arriving in July will turn the tide.
First-generation DVD-RAM discs are capable of holding 2.6GB of data per side to give a maximum capacity of 5.2GB on a double-sided disc. The second-generation format extends this to 4.7GB of storage per side to produce a maximum capacity of 9.4GB per disc. However, Panasonic will initially produce only single-sided discs.
[break]Lees verder bij PC World. Deze DVD-RAM drive is dus alleen niet compatible met Pioneer's DVD brander, die de DVD-RW format gebruikt.[/break] Pioneer's DVD-RW player was the world's first recordable DVD machine, but it uses a different format which has also been adopted by Sharp Corp and Kenwood Corp .
Matsushita, the world's largest maker of consumer electronics, plans to work with Toshiba Corp and Hitachi Ltd with its DVD-RAM system. "We aim to promote DVD-RAM as the de facto industry standard in consumer DVD video recording. We have no plan to make it compatible with DVD-RW recorders," a Matsushita official said. Osaka-based Matsushita aims to produce 4,000 units a month and market the machines in the United States later this year. A launch schedule for Europe has not been decided, it said. Industry specialists see Matsushita's entry as the start of a "format war" in DVD recording systems that are seen as successors to the ubiquitous video cassette recorder.
Thanks MiWa® voor de tip.