I/OMagic officially announced today that it will begin shipping the next generation of high-speed dual drives into the North American marketplace in late October 2003.

The new internal DVDRW/R Dual Format 8X DVD Rewritable drive burns all standard media discs, including DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW and CD-R/-RW and is compatible with a broad variety of DVD players. As of the distribution date of this announcement, I/OMagic will be one of just two companies to ship an 8X Dual drive.

The DVDRW/R Dual Format 8X DVD Rewritable drive is an 8x4x12x DVD Rewritable drive and a 40x24x40x CD Rewritable drive. It includes Pinnacle software and new CD burning technology (Sanyo's HD-BURN) that increases storage capacity, giving users up to 1.4 GB of storage space on standard CD-R (double the normal storage capacity of an average CD-R).

The 8X DVD Rewritable drive includes Pinnacle's Studio 8 SE video editing software, Instant CD/DVD SE disc burning suite and Pinnacle Expression software. Operating systems supported are Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE.

The new I/OMagic DVDRW/R Dual Format 8X DVD Rewritable drive is set to begin shipping in late October 2003 to Best Buy, CompUSA, Fred Meyer, Staples stores and Dell.com, with an introductory price of $199.99.