CeBIT 2002 - The Background Info

CD Format - Page 3

The notebook users will be very happy from the news that many manufacturers are preparing faster DVD-ROM, DVD/CD-RW and even DVD-R recorders for their portable PC. TEAC and few others presented a new slim-line series of 24x/10x/24x CD-RW drives. Panasonic plans to ship also many new models for the notebook users from combo DVD/CD-RW drives ,with slot-in option, and up to DVD-R/RAM slim-line drives!

Of course there will be more new external portable drives. LG announced an external slim-line drive that supports 24x/10x/24x and 8x (DVD) reading speeds. ASUS has another proposal of 16x/8x/24x and 8x (DVD) with both USB 2.0/FireWire interfaces and maybe an MP3 playback option.

The majority of the external portable recorders will support only the USB2.0 interface. As it seems FireWire gets less support. However FireWire still holds strong in the DV camera area, since FireWire supports Copy protection management, that USB 2.0 doesn't.

The most known optical storage device (CD-ROM) seems that will stop being manufactured and by the middle of next year will stop selling. The DVD slowly but steady overpasses the CD format. Most manufacturers agreed that faster reading speeds than 16x (for DVD) can be achieved but the noise would be higher. Affreey plans to ship a 25x DVD/100x CD-ROM drive, somewhere inside 2002, but so far we do not have an official announcement.