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Royal Philips Electronics announced an alliance with Intersil Corporation to jointly develop a reference design based on a Philips chip set and Intersil laser driver for DVD+RW/+R (DVD+ReWriteable/+Recordable) drives. The reference design for both PC and standalone DVD recorders will support 4X record speeds, and has the potential to support record speeds up to 12X. With DVD recorders based on this reference design, consumers will have the ability to create 4.7 GByte video or data DVDs in fewer than 15 minutes, twice the speed of existing DVD recorders. Typical applications include producing home video and photo album DVDs, and PC data backup and archiving.

The DVD+RW reference design will be based on an Intersil laser driver IC, and Philips encoder and decoder semiconductors and firmware (software). The reference design will be offered to a broad range of DVD+RW manufacturers, including Philips. A DVD+RW/+R data drive allows consumers to store up to an equivalent of seven data CDs on a single disc.

"DVD writer shipments for the PC and consumer electronics markets are expected to grow from six million units in 2002 to 60 million in 2006," said Michelle Abraham, senior analyst for In-Stat/MDR. "We expect to see consumers adopt DVD rewritable quickly, because of their familiarity with CD-RW technology."

"Intersil Corporation is pleased to collaborate with Philips, a technology leader in optical storage, to bring high-speed DVD+RW recording to the market. We plan to continue working with Philips to achieve even higher DVD recording speeds," said Rich Beyer, president and CEO of Intersil.

Philips' collaboration with Intersil builds on Philips' pioneering development and continuing leadership in optical storage technology. As the inventor of the Compact Disc (CD) in 1982, Philips has been leading and setting CD and DVD storage standards for two decades.

"Intersil's innovative programmable laser drivers, combined with Philips Nexperia software and encoder/decoder chips, will enable a new generation of high-speed DVD+RW recorders," said Leon Husson, executive vice president, Philips Semiconductors. "We expect that our ongoing collaboration with Intersil, the industry leader in laser driver ICs, will bring additional new features to DVD+R/RW recorders."

The rewritable DVD+RW/+R format enables true convergence between personal computing and consumer electronic products. DVD+R and DVD+RW discs written on a DVD+RW/+R recorder can be read and played in the vast majority of existing DVD drives.

"DVD+RW/+R technology offers significant advantages over other DVD recording formats, including support for variable rate audio/video encoding, which allows consumers to achieve higher-quality video using less disc space, and the ability to easily add additional data to an existing DVD+RW disc," Husson added.

Philips plans to offer the DVD+RW/+R reference design based on the Intersil laser driver in early 2003.

DVD+RW is the compatible, rewritable DVD format developed by the DVD+RW Alliance -- a group of industry-leading personal computing, optical storage and electronics manufacturers. Alliance members include Dell, HP, MCC/Verbatim, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson Multimedia and Yamaha. According to the DVD+RW Alliance, more than 70 additional companies have formally pledged support for DVD+RW/+R technology.