Toshiba will ship a high-end DVD notebook within months.
Toshiba to ship DVD-RAM, notebook DVD-ROM
By Rob Guth
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 11:42 AM PT, Aug 21, 1997
Toshiba on Thursday continued to push the DVD technology envelope by announcing a slim DVD-ROM drive and its first recordable models amid industry unrest over the high capacity storage platform.
The announcement positions Toshiba as the first company to roll out a slim drive and DVD-RAM units. From the earliest development of DVD technology, Toshiba has aggressively promoted the format as the heir apparent to today's CD-ROM drives and VHS home video recorders.
The company spokesman denied that Thursday's announcement was prompted to shore up support for the DVD format in response to unrest that surfaced last week when two leading storage providers, NEC and Sony, both announced they will not support the DVD Forum's specification for the recordable version of the DVD.
Both companies will pursue their own formats which offer backward compatibly with the DVD-ROM but are not related to the DVD-RAM.
"We didn't make the announcement today to make the DVD Forum have a bigger impact," the Toshiba spokesman said, admitting however that it "is very, very nice timing."
Toshiba is now shipping its SD-C2002 thin DVD-ROM drive for a sample price of $500. Designed for notebooks, the 380 gram unit measures 17mm in height and supports DVD-ROM, DVD-Video as well as all major CD formats.
Toshiba will ship a high-end notebook housing the drive within several months, possibly in November at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, officials said. In addition next year the company will ship a 12.7-mm thick notebook DVD-ROM drive, they said.
Over an ATAPI interface unit achieves a data transfer rate of 2,700Kbps for DVD disks and 2,400Kbps for CD disks, a spokesman said. Random access times are 180 milliseconds and 120 milliseconds for DVDs and CDs, respectively.
The slim drive has a width of 128mm and a height of 133.1mm. It consumes an average of three watts. Volume production will begin in September.
Also next month the company will begin taking orders for a recordable DVD-RAM unit for use with a SCSI interface while in November it will begin shipping a ATAPI compatible recordable drive, officials said. Both will be sample priced at $750.
The DVD-RAM units can store 2.6GB of data on a single-side disk and 5.2GB on a double-sided disk. Both units are compatible with DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-R, CD-Audio, CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW.
Sometime next year Toshiba will ship a 17mm high RAM drive, officials said.
The DVD Forum, including Matsushita Electric Industrial and Hitachi Ltd., will hold a seminar in Tokyo next Monday designed to explain the technology behind DVD format.
Toshiba Corp., in Tokyo, can be reached at toshiba.com.
Toshiba to ship DVD-RAM, notebook DVD-ROM
By Rob Guth
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 11:42 AM PT, Aug 21, 1997
Toshiba on Thursday continued to push the DVD technology envelope by announcing a slim DVD-ROM drive and its first recordable models amid industry unrest over the high capacity storage platform.
The announcement positions Toshiba as the first company to roll out a slim drive and DVD-RAM units. From the earliest development of DVD technology, Toshiba has aggressively promoted the format as the heir apparent to today's CD-ROM drives and VHS home video recorders.
The company spokesman denied that Thursday's announcement was prompted to shore up support for the DVD format in response to unrest that surfaced last week when two leading storage providers, NEC and Sony, both announced they will not support the DVD Forum's specification for the recordable version of the DVD.
Both companies will pursue their own formats which offer backward compatibly with the DVD-ROM but are not related to the DVD-RAM.
"We didn't make the announcement today to make the DVD Forum have a bigger impact," the Toshiba spokesman said, admitting however that it "is very, very nice timing."
Toshiba is now shipping its SD-C2002 thin DVD-ROM drive for a sample price of $500. Designed for notebooks, the 380 gram unit measures 17mm in height and supports DVD-ROM, DVD-Video as well as all major CD formats.
Toshiba will ship a high-end notebook housing the drive within several months, possibly in November at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, officials said. In addition next year the company will ship a 12.7-mm thick notebook DVD-ROM drive, they said.
Over an ATAPI interface unit achieves a data transfer rate of 2,700Kbps for DVD disks and 2,400Kbps for CD disks, a spokesman said. Random access times are 180 milliseconds and 120 milliseconds for DVDs and CDs, respectively.
The slim drive has a width of 128mm and a height of 133.1mm. It consumes an average of three watts. Volume production will begin in September.
Also next month the company will begin taking orders for a recordable DVD-RAM unit for use with a SCSI interface while in November it will begin shipping a ATAPI compatible recordable drive, officials said. Both will be sample priced at $750.
The DVD-RAM units can store 2.6GB of data on a single-side disk and 5.2GB on a double-sided disk. Both units are compatible with DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-R, CD-Audio, CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW.
Sometime next year Toshiba will ship a 17mm high RAM drive, officials said.
The DVD Forum, including Matsushita Electric Industrial and Hitachi Ltd., will hold a seminar in Tokyo next Monday designed to explain the technology behind DVD format.
Toshiba Corp., in Tokyo, can be reached at toshiba.com. |
