To help drive sales for the Hitachi DZ-BD10HA Blu-ray camcorder, Hitachi has announced a new direct sales website at www.hitachibd.com. Launched today, the website will allow consumers to purchase the camcorder which sells for $1099. The website also features information to help educate consumers about Blu-ray as well as interactive guides that demo the features of the Hitachi DZ-BD10HA.

The Full 1080p capable DZ-BD10HA was launched back in September and features a 7 megapixel CMOS image sensor, optical image stabilization technologies, face detection technology, a built-in 30GB hard drive, and support for recording HD video to three separate formats (Blu-ray Disc, Hard Drive, and SDHC cards).

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Hitachi is out with their second generation 500GB mobile hard drive – the Travelstar 5K500.B. The new 2.5 inch hard drive features advanced data encryption technology along with new green features such as a halogen-free design and reduced read/write power specifications.

The Travelstar 5K500.B features:

• Optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for hard drive level security
• Meets the forthcoming Storage Security specification
• Meets Hitachi’s EcoTrac classification
• Read/Write power specification of 1.4 W
• 5400 RPM Speed
• SATA 3Gb/s interface
• 12 ms seek time
• Available in storage sizes ranging from 120GB to 500GB.

The Travelstar 5K500.B will be available starting in December.

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Hitachi Home Electronics has introduced a new next-generation Blu-ray Disc Hybrid Camcorder called the DZ-BD10HA which seemingly has all the different storage options covered. First off, the DZ-BD10HA has a built-in 30GB HDD which allows you to record up to 4 hours, 20 minutes of full HD video or 8 hours, 40 minutes of 1440 x 1080 video. If you run out of disk space, you can also record videos or still images directly to SD/SDHC flash memory cards via the built-in SDHC card slot. Nice huh? But wait.. there’s more. Hitachi offers yet a third solution - the ability to transfer full HD video recordings from the hard drive or SDHC card to the built-in BD drive - and all this without the need for a computer. The DZ-BD10HA includes editing functions such as splitting, splicing, deleting, merging, and transitions. There’s even a transcoding feature which coverts full HD videos to DVD quality videos. Very Nice.

Other features of the Hitachi DZ-BD10HA include:

• 7 megapixel CMOS image sensor
• Capture videos and image stills at Full HD (1920 x 1080)
• Face detection technology
• Hitachi developed compact, low power consuming, quiet, and reliable 8cm BD/DVD drive
• One-touch dubbing - transfer HD videos from SDHC or HDD to BD drive at one push of a button
• Optical Image Stabilization

The Hitach DZ-BD10HA will have an MSRP of $999 and is available in Japan now and will be hitting the US shores in Sept.

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Oh how cute.. it’s not everyday we get to hear of a new catch phrase. Hitachi’s got a new one for all of us - calling this time period the beginning of the “Tera Era”. They also took this opportunity to introduce two new green drives - the Deskstar 7K1000.B and the Deskstar E7K1000 for business critical applications.

So what’s up with the “Tera Era” statement? Well Hitachi sees “digital information” being “created, captured, and duplicated around the world” at an “unrelenting pace.” (yeah it’s called bittorrent! I kid…. sorta) Soo.. with multimedia content ever increasing, and computers ever more prevalent in our societies, one would figure that we all need just a bit more disk space. (yeah no duh..) Ah but no one else has come up with a good slogan for this time period so why not dub it the Tera Era. There ya go.

OK.. back to the matter at hand, we’ve got ourselves a couple of new drives from Hitachi. First up, there’s the Deskstar 7K1000.B which features:

• 7200 RPM rotational speed
• Three-disk design
• Improves idle power consumption up to 43 percent over 1TB predecessor
• Optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) provides protection against data loss and piracy
• Utilizes AES encryption
• SATA 3Gb/s interface
• Also available in 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, and 750GB capacities
• Idle power for 1TB drive is 5.2 W

For business critical applications, there’s the Deskstar E7K1000 which features:

• 32MB buffer
• five year warranty
• 1.2 million hour Mean Time Before Failure
• Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology
• Same low power characteristics as 7K1000.B
• SATA 3Gb/s interface
• Also available in 500GB, and 750GB capacities

The new drives will be available this month.

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Technorati Tags: Hitachi, Desktar 7K1000.B, E7K1000, Hard drives, Tera Era

Hitachi announced their fourth generation notebook hard drive today - the Travelstar 7K320. According to the company, the Travelstar 7K320 delivers 60 percent higher capacity (320GB) than its predecessor, and improves application performance by 12 percent and power consumption by 22 percent. Hitachi also offers an optional Bulk Data Encryption for increased data security and plans to ship an enhanced-availability model for low-duty-cycle 24/7 applications.

Features of the Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 include the following:

• Shock protection of 400Gs
• 7200 RPM speeds with 5400 RPM equivalent power consumption
• 320GB of space
• SATA 3Gb/s interface
• 4.2 ms average latency
• 12 ms average read time
• 1.0W active idle
• 0.8W low-power idle

The new Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 is now available to customers worldwide. The enhanced availability version will be available during the third quarter.

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Technorati Tags: Hitachi, Travelstar 7K320, Notebook hard drive

Looking for a thin flat panel display? Well you’ll be happy to hear that the Hitach 1.5 inch UltraThin displays are now available in the US. The UltraThins will be available in four screen sizes (32 inch, 37 inch, 42 inch, and 47 inch) and will show up in two lineups from Hitachi - the Director’s Series (V) and the UltraVision (V) models. Here are the specs, prices and availability:

Director Series Models:

UltraVision Models:

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Enterprise hard drives just got a little bit larger and faster thanks to the introduction of the Hitachi Ultrastar 15K450. Using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), the 15K450 delivers 450GB of storage capacity while spinning at 15,000 RPM with a 2 ms average latency. Hitachi bills this drive as ideal for “mission-critical server and storage applications”. Heck, I think I could use some of these drives in my own work environment!

Key features of the Ultrastar 15K450 include:

• 30 percent faster in sequential throughput than previous models
• Average seek times as low as 3.3 ms
• Ships with either 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or 4Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces
• Contains fluid dynamic bearing motors
• Contains Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology which detects disturbances that can occur in multi-drive configurations and attempts to counteract them

Specs include:

• 450GB capacity
• 4 platters, 8 recording heads
• 2090 Mb/s max media data rate
• 3.6 average seek time
• 15,000 RPM, 2 ms average latency
• 16MB data buffer
• 25.8 mm in height
• 750 in weight
• 250 G/2 ms pulse non-operating shock
• SAS: 13.3 watt idle power
• FCAL: 13.4 watt idle power
• 5 to 55 degrees C operating temperature

Come to think of it.. I’d love to have one of these bad boys for my home theater media serving.. hmm

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Hitachi is set to release a second generation Blu-ray/HDD based camcorder system in early February. This new camcorder supports the 8cm mini Blu-ray disc media format and easily transfers content between the Blu-ray disc and the integrated 60GB hard drive. Features include:

• Support for 1920 x 1080 video capture
• Record at 720 x 480 for DVD recording
• Integrated flash for still images
• HDMI output

At 1920 x 1080, you’ll be able to get 9 hours of recording on the 60GB hard drive and 1 hour of recording on a Blu-ray disc.  The price for the new Hitachi DZ-BD9H will be around $1700 dollars. Since the camcorder probably won’t show up here in the US until the middle of the year, you still have some time to save up! If you want a hard drive only version of this camcorder, then the Hitachi DZ-HD90 will go for around $1300.

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Don’t look now but notebook hard drives just got a wee bit larger thanks to Hitachi’s latest entry - the Travelstar 5K500. The Travelstar 5K500 is a 2.5 inch hard drive available in both 400GB and 500GB models. According to Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the Travelstar 5K500 is designed for slim desktop systems, notebooks, and gaming console systems. Features of the Travelstar 5K500 include:

• Fourth generation Hitachi mobile drive featuring perpendicular magnetic recording technology
• 3.0 Gbps SATA interface
• Patented Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology which acts as an early warning system for the drive
• Three disk design but only uses as much power as a two disk drive
• 1.9 watt read/write power draw
• 0.7 watt low power idle

Hitachi is also making a version of this drive available for “lower-transaction” environments called the Travelstar E5K500. 

The Travelstar 5K500 will be available in February while the Travelstar E5K500 will be available at the end of Q2.

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