Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions (PLDS) announced plans for upcoming product ranges at a press conference during Computex.

The new eSAU108 is a USB-powered external DVD burner for notebooks. Available in two colors, the lightweight drive burns 8x DVD+R/-R/+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 24x CD-R/RW burning speeds, as well as 5x for DVD-RAM. It will be introduced to the market by July 2008.

The Lite-On iHAP622 is an internal half height type DVD-RW drive capable of burning on recordable DVDs at 22x, DVD-RAM at 12x and supports Nero's SecurDisc technology and PLDS' Smarterase technologies.

SecurDisc technology, also met in LG's DVD burners, provides a full feature set of data security-related functions through a combined hardware/software solution. It offers encryption with password protection, digital signature, higher data reliability through data storage redundancy and defect management, as well as copy protection for PDF files and a data integrity checker.

SmartErase allows users to permanently erase data from standard recordable-only discs such as CD-R and DVD+/- R (DL) media. It could be used by companies or individuals that need to delete confidential data stored on a write-once disc. SmartErase overwrites the data with meaningless characters, which makes the disc unreadable. After a full erase the data can not be recovered.

A SATA version of the new 22x DVD burner will be also available (iHAS622).

And finally PLDS plans to release a new Blu-ray BD-COMBO drive later in the year. The new iHES106 is SATA drive that reads single layer BD-R/RE/ROM media at 6x and the corresponding double layer formats at 4x. For the drive, DSP chipsets are supplied by MediaTek and BD pick-up heads by Sanyo Electric. The drive also supports the DVD and CD formats, as you can see in the summarized specifications below:

Read speeds

BD-R/RE/ROM SL: 6x
BD-R/RE/ROM DL: 4x
DVD+R/-R SL/DL: 16x/8x
DVD+RW/-RW SL : 8x/6x
DVD-RAM: 12x
CD-R/RW: 48x/32x