The cloud may be a hot topic in storage but it’s not very convenient when you’ve got more than a couple of gigabytes of data to back up. Pioneer’s new external Blu-Ray burner can handle up to 128GB with its 1.27cm-tall frame — the world’s thinnest. More »
In Johannesburg, South Africa, some thieves have found that there’s an even cheaper and more anonymous way to make phone calls than buying disposable “burners” (like those featuring so prominently in The Wire): Traffic lights. More »
Even though 8x media is still hard if not impossible to come by here in the States, Lacie’s new d2 external burner will be ready for it when it’s here. It’s $US450, available now.
Not to be outdone by the folks at Buffalo, Sony’s latest internal SATA BD recorder can achieve 8x writing speeds on the latest 6x BD-R media, for zapping 25GB in 15 minutes and 50Gb in 30. DVDs are also written, of course, at 16x. It’s $US400 and shipping next month, with an included Men In Black Blu-ray disc from the good folks at Sony Pictures. Where’s your Will Smith, Buffalo? Full details follow:
Lacie has updated its external d2 Blu-ray burner to write at 4x speeds, twice as fast as its predecessor. The BD drive supports 25 or 50 GB BD-R and BD-RE discs, as well as multiple DVD and CD formats. In addition, the aluminium alloy case has been redesigned by Neil Poulton, giving it a more simple and appealing look. The d2 has both Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 connections, and is available now for as low as US$650. [Lacie via Gizmag]
Sony’s President and Electronics CEO, Ryoji Chubachi, hinted at new areas that their Blu-ray technology could expand into, including burners that sit inside LCD HDTVs with “recording” functionality. If this means that your future Sony TV will be able to record HDTV shows onto Blu-ray, that would be super neat (and rather convenient). What we’d really like is for Sony TVs to DVR functionality, which you could then offload shows you wanted to back up onto Blu-ray. We’d definitely pay for that. [Digitimes]
I’m usually turned off by video transfer/burner devices like this Canon DW-100 because of how unrefined DVD burning still is. The DW-100 takes high-def AVCHD video from your camcorder and burns it to DVD without a computer. It’s hard to argue with that.
It can also function as an external burner for any PC or Mac computer. If this works like it should, and Canon markets it properly, a device like this could do well in the current home movie market. It is expected to release in March 2008, but no price has been set. [Akihabara News via Geek Sugar via Crunch Gear] More »
TEAC’s One-Step DVD/CD Duplicator will rip your CDs, or DVDs, without the need for a connection to a PC. That is enough information for us to decide we like it; it is simple and it can copyright infringe in around 6 minutes flat, thanks to the 48x CD drive read speed / 16x DVD read speed. Nice—but don’t use it to copyright infringe, or you shall be hunted down like a dog and be made to pay like a millionaire pooch. More »
Samsung’s Super-WriteMaster may not be the fastest burner for regular DVD+Rs (Line-Ons can burn 20x too), but its dual-layer burning seems to be tops. Jumping up from an 10-12x found in other burners, the SH-203 has 16x dual-layer burning, along with 20x for DVD+ and -R, 12x DVD-RAM, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW. It runs off a SATA interface so make sure your computer was made some time after the second Spider-man movie before picking one up for $79. [Samsung via DigitalTrends] More »
