Sony/Western Digital hard drives for Home Networks................
nni.nikkei.co.jp
Tuesday, December 15, 1998
Sony, Western Digital Tying Up On Hard Disk Drives For AV Products
TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Sony Corp. (6758) said Tuesday it and U.S.-based Western Digital Corp. (WDC) will form a strategic partnership to jointly develop a new hard disk drive for consumer audio visual applications.
The two companies will develop and test audio visual HDD by the end of March 1999, and aim to commercialize it in 2000, Sony said.
The joint development will integrate Western Digital's HDD manufacturing expertise with Sony's audio visual technology, the Japanese consumer electronics giant said.
"With the advent of the digitization of broadcasting and communications, it is expected that users will require an environment that will allow personal computers and various digital AV appliances to be interconnected and interoperated in an integrated home network system," Sony said in a statement.
In order to develop home network, or home server, products, a new HDD architecture is required with the ability to handle multiple streams of AV data, it noted.
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