Matsushita 5X DVD-ROM drive also plays DVD-RAM discs. Production of 800K to 1M drives from August through December 1998.........
Matsushita announces 5x dvd-rom drive
July 24, 1998
TOKYO, JAPAN, Newsbytes via NewsEdge
Corporation : Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics
Industries Ltd. (MKE), a unit of Matsushita Electric
Industrial Co., Ltd. [TOKYO:6752], has announced a
new 5X DVD-ROM drive that is capable of accepting
DVD-RAM discs.
The new drive, designed for internal fitting inside
desktop personal computers, will begin shipping to
the company's Japanese and American OEM
customers in August.
It features a newly-developed LSI (large scale
integrated circuit) chip and uses the constant
angular velocity (CAV) system to spin the disc. It is
capable of playing DVD-ROM discs at 5 times
standard speed, CD-ROM discs at 32 times
standard speed, and can also play DVD-RAM media
conforming to the DVD-RAM Standard, as well as
CD-ROM/CD- R/CD-RW media.
To play a DVD-RAM disc, users will have to open
the disc's protective cartridge and remove the disc,
because the new drive does not include a
mechanism to handle the DVD-RAM cartridge. Once
the cartridge is opened, DVD- RAM drives will not
write to the discs because of possible contamination
on the disc surface, leaving the discs read only.
Specifications include an IDE/ATAPI interface, 512
kilobyte buffer memory, maximum data transfer rate
of 4.8 megabytes per second for CD-ROM and 6.75
megabytes per second for DVD-ROM, and a random
access time of 90 milliseconds for CD-ROM and 140
milliseconds for DVD- ROM.
Monthly production of the SR-8583 drive has been
set at 200,000 units per month, the spokeswoman
said. |
