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To: BillyG who wrote (30003)	2/27/1998 1:59:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Not quite what you were looking for... CONSUMER ELECTRONICS (c) Copyright 1998 Warren Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 02/16/98 DVD - RAM aftermarket kit using Hitachi drive will ship at end of March from Pacific Digital (PD) at $799. Irvine, Cal., distributor will deliver evaluation units to retailers, computer OEMs and test labs this week, said Sales & Mktg. Vp Alex Connolly. Company will distribute blank DVD - RAM from Maxell, others. Connolly told us PD eventually will carry Matsushita-made DVD - RAM drives, but latter won't "officially" deliver production samples until end of Feb. PD will offer other rewritable DVD formats when available, including Pioneer's DVD-R and R/W formats -- but not MMVF (Multmedia Video File) from NEC (TVD Nov 24 p9, Nov 3 p10). Connolly characterized 5.2 Gbyte format as "an offshoot" that couldn't be read by other DVD drives and whose discs have 4.7 Gbyte capacity per side in single-layer versions (TVD Dec 1 p11).

To: BillyG who wrote (30003)	3/2/1998 2:57:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Billy, here's your Hitachi DVD-RAM story.............................. digitaltheater.com Hitachi Europe Unveils First DVD-RAM Drive <Picture> [ Back to the News \| Back HOME ] MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE, ENGLAND, Newsbytes via NewsEdge Corporation : Hitachi Europe has announced it plans to start shippingits first DVD RAM drive in Europe this April. Known as the GF-1000 series, the units will be shipping in about six weeks time on a pan European basis, and are claimed to comply fully with the DVD-RAM standard established by the DVD Forum last year. According to Nicholas Sundby, Hitachi Europe's storage product manager, the DVD- RAM drive is a new class of storage device giving the user unprecedented levels of power, versatility, and value for money. "The rewritable cartridges are accessed in a similar way to a hard disk and have a formatted capacity up to 4.6 gigabytes, yet the drive can read any DVD- ROM or CD-ROM disk. This makes the GF-1000 different from any low cost removable storage device previously available," he said. Sundby said that storage is cheap at around one cent per megabyte, "but the key difference between this drive and other forms of low-cost removable storage is that it opens up access to the new world of DVD software that we expect to substantially change the PC landscape over the next few years." Initially, the drive will be available as PC internal unit with a SCSI-2 interface (GF-1050), followed by an ATAPI E-IDE version in June of this year. Plans also call for the company to offer the SCSI-2 version as an external unit with integrated power supply and SCSI interface later in the year. On a technical level, Hitachi claims that DVD-ROM and CD-ROM compatibility is achieved through the use of a twin laser pickup assembly to ensure read compatibility with any DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW or other CD format media. According to the Japanese giant, the DVD-RAM media can be formatted using either Universal Disk Format (UDF) or the Windows FAT16 file system. Newsbytes notes that a single sided disk using the UDF file system has a formatted capacity of 2.3 GB, and 2 GB with the FAT16 file system. The double- sided disks have total formatted capacities of 4.6 GB (UDF) and 4 GB (Windows FAT16). Therefore, Hitachi claims, use of UDF is claimed to overcome the 2 GB limit on FAT16 partitions, and allows improved portability of data across platforms. The GF-1000 is supplied with Windows 95 drivers and disk formatting utilities. Plans call for Hitachi to offer software support for Windows NT and Apple Macintosh computers later in the year. Officials are shying away from stating retail pricing on the new drives, but the official line is that "it is anticipated that the GF- 1000 family of products will retail at prices comparable to other well established forms of removable storage technologies of similar capacities. Further details of the new drives can be found on the Web at hitachi- eu.com/hel/ied . Reported by Newsbytes News Network, newsbytes.com . (19980227/Press Contact: Anne Harding, Smith & Jones +44-1491-410700; Reader Contact: Hitachi Europe +44-1628-585000; Fax +44-1628-585490) <<Newsbytes -- 02-27-98>> [Copyright 1998, NewsBytes]