Samsung is expanding its TruDirect' line of optical disc drives with the development of a slim, slot-in external model, the SE-T084M/RSWD.

Samsung's TruDirect technology allows consumers to create DVDs and burn digital content through a PC without the need for a hard drive.

Samsung's External TruDirect' drive weighs less than one pound and even works without a power cord. To make a DVD movie with TruDirect', users only need to connect a digital video camera to their PC, press 'PLAY' on the camera, click the TruDirect shortcut icon that pops up in the TruDirect' program window, and then click the 'RECORD' icon. All you need is a PC and TruDirect' to turn wherever you are into a true DVD creation studio.

Compared to using a hard disk drive, the TruDirect SE-T084M cuts down on the time it takes to create DVDs as no pre-mastering, multiplexing or hard-disk buffering is needed, enabling real-time recording of personal videos, photos or data files onto DVD discs. Creating a DVD of a one-hour video stream generally takes one hour and five minutes and to create a DVD on the TruDirect SE-T084M from a one-hour hard disk drive camcorder file of approximately 4.1GBs just takes 30 minutes.

In addition to DVD creation, the TruDirect SE-T084M features 8X DVD+R and DVD-R writing, 6X DVD+R and -R Dual Layer writing, and 5X DVD-RAM writing.

The TruDirect SE-T084M will be shipping in July 2008 with a $149 MSRP.

Samsung will also release a combo drive in Q4. It will support reading of Blu-ray as well as read/write for DVDs and CDs. His colleague, John Suh, told reporters the write-capable Blu-ray drive will allow read/write functionality across all three media types. A new Blu-ray burner is expected early next year.