DVD+RW Alliance

The DVD+RW Alliance was at full strength in this year’s CeBIT exhibition in Hanover. There were a number of new, innovative products on display with perhaps the big news being the availability of dual layer DVD+R drives due sometime in spring.

We also saw 8x and 16x DVD+R/+RW drives. 16x is the maximum speed for DVD media due to the limitations of the polycarbonate material used in the production of DVD media, when exposed to high rotation speeds (10,800 rpm). Philips demonstrated the new DVDRW885K 8x DVD+R burner with 2.4x DVD+R9 writing support. The kit has been announced to be available in Europe in April, bundled with DVD+R9 media by MKM. In addition, Philips demonstrated the DVDR1640K, capable of 16x recording on 4.7GB DVD+R media and 2.4x for DVD+R9. More information about Philips technology is available here.

In an all-in-one booth, products have been displayed and demonstrated by Ahead, BenQ, CyberLink, Gear Software, HP, Maxell, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Ricoh NTI, Sony etc. Below you can see the new 8x8 DVD recorder from HP:

NTI demonstrated three new versions of Backup NOW!, CD-DVD Maker V6.7 Gold Suite and NTI Dragon Burn for Mac OS. The Backup NOW! Deluxe Suite is addressed towards Corporate Backup/Recovery on client PCs, with new data encryption features. The new version of the CD & DVD-Maker Gold Suite offers a comprehensive set of tools for capturing and creating videos or slideshows; as well as image-level and file backup recovery. +VR support for DVD is also supported.

Maxell showcased its new 5x DVD-RAM and 8x DVD±R media. The discs will be available by April/May. In addition, the company will produce DVD+R media for double layer recording, but probably later than August (mass production), due to the increased requirements in the manufacturing/designing process.

Sony showed the DRU-700A, an internal DVD/CD rewritable drive supporting DVD+R DL.

For more information about the companies in the DVD+RW Alliance booth you can visit the corresponding pages in this section.