LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Samsung Electronics,
which last year introduced the first Blu-ray Disc player, says
it will support the rival HD DVD format as well, a move hailed
by supporters of the No. 2 entrant in the high-definition disc
format war.
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
will be very selective in choosing new markets for
its mobile phones and will not take on handset leader Nokia
in the cheapest models, Samsung Chief Executive Yun
Jong-yong said in an interview published on Sunday.
It had to happen, ever since LG stole the CES 2007 limelight with its BH100 Blu-ray/HD DVD player [above], and now it has.
Samsung has announced that it will launch its Duo HD player, the BD-UP5000, in time for Christmas. More importantly, it will fully support the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BDR) interactive technologies, HDi and BD-Java, respectively.
Why is this important? Well, LG’s machine might be great for watching movies in both formats but, under the hood, it sucks when you want to use the menus and interactive content on HD DVD disks. This is a big let down. Samsung seems to be saying that the Duo HD will do it all. No news yet on prices.
“We are very pleased to announce the upcoming release of our Duo HD player,†Dongsoo Jun, executive vice president of the Digital AV Division at Samsung Electronics. “Consumers are hungry for more HD content but are currently confused about competing formats. Samsung’s Duo HD player will allow consumers access to every HD movie title available regardless of the authoring format.â€
This is good news for consumers and, with any luck, more manufacturers will see the light and start churning out dedicated dual format players.-Martin Lynch
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Japan’s Sony Corp. said on Tuesday its
LCD plant joint venture with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics
would start production this summer, a few months ahead of
schedule.
No one likes noisy electronics. That’s why Samsung’s new SpinPoint S Series of HDDs is great; they’re fast and quiet. Perfect for devices that are better seen and not heard, such as DVRs and, ahem, Xbox 360s. They’re rated at 2.4 bel in idle mode and 2.75 bel in seek mode, with 1 bel being equal to 10 decibels. That’s pretty quiet, I guess.
The drives come in 80GB and 160GB models and both sport 7,200-rpm speeds. No word on pricing as of yet, but they should be arriving later this month. –Adam Frucci
Samsung [via The Raw Feed]
No one likes noisy electronics. That’s why Samsung’s new SpinPoint S Series of HDDs is great; they’re fast and quiet. Perfect for devices that are better seen and not heard, such as DVRs and, ahem, Xbox 360s. They’re rated at 2.4 bel in idle mode and 2.75 bel in seek mode, with 1 bel being equal to 10 decibels. That’s pretty quiet, I guess.
The drives come in 80GB and 160GB models and both sport 7,200-rpm speeds. No word on pricing as of yet, but they should be arriving later this month. –Adam Frucci
Samsung [via The Raw Feed]
No one likes noisy electronics. That’s why Samsung’s new SpinPoint S Series of HDDs is great; they’re fast and quiet. Perfect for devices that are better seen and not heard, such as DVRs and, ahem, Xbox 360s. They’re rated at 2.4 bel in idle mode and 2.75 bel in seek mode, with 1 bel being equal to 10 decibels. That’s pretty quiet, I guess.
The drives come in 80GB and 160GB models and both sport 7,200-rpm speeds. No word on pricing as of yet, but they should be arriving later this month. –Adam Frucci
Samsung [via The Raw Feed]
HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics
on Thursday unveiled an upgraded version of its
ultra mobile personal computer (UMPC) in a move to boost
disappointing sales.
Intel has launched its first series of NAND-Flash disk drives, following in the steps of Samsung and SanDisk but, targeting the low-cost computer sector, to start. The Intel® Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive sports a USB connector will be integrated on the motherboards going into newer PCs, notebooks and servers, alongside other devices.
The drives come in 1Gb and 2Gb flavours right now but there are 4Gb and 8GB versions coming out in the coming months. By the end of the year, Intel is planning to have 20Gb and 40GB versions later in the year and by next year there will be 80Gb and 160Gb versions.
However, when it comes to these larger capacities, you can forget value for money since they will cost two or three times more than current HDDs. The Intel drive has a read rates of up to 28Mb per second and write speeds of 20Mb per second. The advantages of solid state drives (SSDs) over existing hard disk drives include faster boot-up and restore times, faster application loading, silent running, more rugged and power efficient. You will be hearing a lot about these drives and new notebooks using them in the coming year.-Martin Lynch
Here we go, the future of hard disk drive technology [at least for a few years] is finally underway with Samsung launching the first of its hybrid HDDs. The 80GB, 120GB and 160GB 2.5in drives are winging their way to system builders right now and you can expect them to start appearing in new notebooks very soon.
Unlike regular drives, these come with either 128MB or 256MB of Flash memory, which will be used as a temporary cache for the most-used applications. The end result is a boot-up time that is twice is fast, as well as faster application access and resume from sleep, as well as a 10 per cent boost to battery life.
According to Samsung, the new drives are also five times more rugged than regular drives since the drive’s platters will be idle 99 per cent of the time which = less disk spinning = less chance of damage when you drop your notebook.
The only things conspicuous by their absence in all of the product information are prices, which you clever ones will realise is not so much an marketing oversight, but a big flashing neon sign that reads: “How Much!!??!!â€.-Martin Lynch