Pioneer Europe today announced the introduction of a new DVD writer (DVD-R7322) for its DRM-7000 DVD jukebox. Recently the capacity of the world's first DVD-R jukebox (introduced in 2000) has been increased to 6.3TB and now it also incorporates a half height 2X (2.7MB/s) DVD-R drive also capable of writing to DVD-RW (1X) and CD-R (8X).

Availability of the new drive is scheduled for Q2/2002.

"Pioneer has always had a commitment to be ahead of the competition, and again we have done it", said Erik Haugen (European Sales Manager, Mass Storage for Pioneer Europe). He continued: "Pioneer's new writer halves the writing time of a DVD-R as well as the space occupied in the jukebox. Alongside reduced costs this means both increased capacity as well as increased speed. This clearly demonstrates DVD-R's rapid development and potential as an alternative to other formats".

In addition the DVD-R7322 incorporates the new BURN-Proof system developed by Pioneer and currently used with the ATAPI stand-alone drive (DVR-A03). This system improves writing performance by eliminating buffer under-run problems through careful monitoring of the SCSI bus and data throughput by pausing the writer to allow the server to catch up.

Main applications for DVD-R jukebox technology include medical imaging (PACS and Cardiovascular imaging), print/graphics files libraries, CAD data archiving, document management (i.e. cheque imaging and insurance documents), bank transaction records, legal records and audio/video libraries.

With the introduction of DVD-RW and the lowering of media price, opportunities in employing DVD jukeboxes into new applications such as CCTV (video surveillance archiving) and back-up becomes possible.