News

Hitachi unveils 2.5" 7mm & 9.5mm CinemaStar HDDs for AV

Hitachi has announced its new family of CinemaStar 2.5" hard disks for set-top boxes such as DVRs, Satellite/Cable PVRs, including traditional and ultra-slim models. The family includes 7mm models for ultra-slim boxes and high capacity 9.5mm models, all featuring quiet acoustics and optimised for 24/7 recording, such as in a CCTV DVR.

• 16 May 12 23:41 by Seán Hard Disk Drives

Hybrid HDD Ultrabooks to attack pure-SSD Ultrabook market (2)

According to researchers at TrendFocus, a 128GB SSD still accounts for roughly 25% of the BOM (build of materials) cost of an Ultrabook. With the development of thin 7mm 2.5" HDDs, TrendFocus predicts that Ultrabook manufacturers will use a large capacity 7mm 2.5" HDD coupled with a small mSATA to run as a cache for the SSD, to undercut with pure SSD Ultrabooks.

• 15 May 12 18:15 by Seán Hard Disk Drives,Solid State (ssd)

Asus unveils a stylish USB 6x Blu-ray writer inc. BDXL support

The writer can write up to 6x BD-R SL/DL, 4X BD-R TL/QL, 2X BD-RE SL/DL/TL, 8X DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 6x DVD±R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW. It can read up to 6x Blu-ray, 8X DVD and 24x CD. Video discs are limited to 2x BDMV, 4x DVD Video and 10x Video/Audio CD.

• 15 May 12 17:29 by Seán Blu-ray writers & players

Dane-Elec launches mySSD O-Series for mission-critical use

The Series features SMART enterprise-level data monitoring, advanced wear levelling, two embedded encryption engines and a high performance SiliconMotion SM2244 SSD SATA2 controller. The SSD range is capable of delivering up up to 285MB/s read and 275MB/s write, with random access performance of up to 50k IOPS.

• 15 May 12 01:27 by Seán Solid State (ssd)

Icy Dock ships bare-HDD hot-swap internal docking station (2)

Icy Dock has unveiled its latest 5.25" bay dock, the MB971SP-B DuoSwap that bare 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs can be slotted directly into, without the need for a tray or screwing anything on to the HDD. The dock can hold a 2.5" HDD and a 3.5" HDD simultaneously and each slot has individual power and eject buttons.

• 14 May 12 22:24 by Seán Hard Disk Drives

Microsoft invests in startup BitTorrent piracy-killer company (12)

A new Russian based startup company, Pirate Pay, claims to offer the entertainment industry a technology to kill BitTorrent based file sharing by attacking BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible to share affected files.

• 14 May 12 17:10 by Seán Piracy

Digistor ships 100GB BD-R XL for HD video & data archival (4)

This media features a 4X write-speed , an inkjet printable surface and its specialised hard coat technology surface. This media is compatible with all BD-R XL capable optical drives.

• 14 May 12 14:54 by Seán Blu-ray writers & players

Transcend launches SandForce based mSATA SATA3 SSDs

This MSA720 range is capable of delivering up to 560MB/s read and 530MB/s write, along with a random 4K write of 91,000 IOPS, bringing it inline with upper-end 2.5" SSDs. For security, hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption automatically encrypts data in real-time without any loss of performance.

• 11 May 12 21:23 by Seán Solid State (ssd)

Enthrill unveils PackaDRM to protect eBooks with 'social DRM' (5)

Enthrill Distribution is looking to transform the eBook industry with platform-neutral "Social DRM" that works through the use of watermarking, called PackaDRM(TM). This DRM relies on enforcing a contract with readers through a personalised warning about copyright clearly visible at the start and end of the book.

• 11 May 12 00:23 by Seán E-Readers and Tablets

DVD/Blu-ray's to show 20 seconds of unskippable warnings (31)

The six major movie studios will be placing two unskippable ten second copyright warnings on all their new DVD and Blu-ray releases starting this week, which appear after pressing 'Play' at the main menu.

• 10 May 12 17:19 by Seán Movies

TDK launches Series 7 line of mSATA SSDs with SLC NAND

TDK had launched its Series 7 line of mSATA SSDs with SLC NAND, making them ideal for use as a cache drive Intel's Rapid Storage Technology SSD caching. This SSD new series 7 line features 128-bit AES encryption, an SATA2 mSATA interface and sequential read and write performance of up to 170MB/s and 70MB/s, respectively.

• 10 May 12 00:32 by Seán Uncategorized

Tor Books plan to end DRM may help end eBook format wars (1)

Tor Books, the world's largest science fiction publisher Tor Books, along with its UK sister company, Tor UK, announced that by the summer, they will be eliminating DRM from its eBooks. This announcement made at the end of April has become a major event in the publishing history, marking the end for DRM.

• 09 May 12 20:19 by Seán E-Readers and Tablets

A new ISP in New Zealand offers access to geolocation blocked sites (5)

A New Zealand ISP is pushing back against global restrictions and access to popular media sites. Is this the beginning of a new type of global access to media?

• 08 May 12 16:16 by Kerry56 Uncategorized

ADATA launches SP900 & SP800 SSD series in US & Canada

ADATA has launched its SATA3 Premier Pro SP900 and SATA2 Premier SP800 SSD ranges to the US and Canadian market, featuring ~7% additional capacity.

• 08 May 12 15:11 by Seán Solid State (ssd)

The Pirate Bay warns of scam proxies/copies (3)

As The Pirate Bay censorship reaches more countries, various websites sprung up to help users get around the block. A few of these are using crafty new methods to trick users into paying "donations" for access.

• 08 May 12 12:35 by Seán Piracy