Plextor really managed to surprise us by releasing a new CD recorder, titled Premium 2. The company of course has an almost legendary reputation and history in high quality CD-R and CD-ROM drives, focusing on high quality audio features and the quality of the recording. They were the “kings” of CD-R and it looks like that they want to make sure to keep the title with the aging format.

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So begins the next generation of home video as the HD-DVD has been officially launched. Toshiba has managed to ship 10.000 HD-DVD players and also several movie titles were released including The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby and Phantom of the Opera. High-Def DVD Digest was quick to review the The Last Samurai HD release and here are they thoughts about the quality.

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Quotes for DVD+R/-R and CD-R discs will increase slightly in the third quarter, according to CMC Magnetics. However, CMC declined to estimate how much prices will rise, as the outcome of an anti-dumping investigation currently being conducted by the European Union (EU) will affect price changes as well.

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The Double Layer recording with the capacity of 8.5 gigabytes has not been a great success so far. The prices of the DL media has been so high, that it has made better sense to buy a pack of single layer discs instead. Despite the low sales figures, the -RW and +RW camps are both still developing the Double Layer technology further.

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Sony has released a few details about what is expected to be its first desktop PC to include a Blu-ray Disc drive. The Vaio RC300-series machines will have Blu-ray Reader/Writer that support single-layer 25GB discs or double-layer 50GB discs.

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Fujitsu said on Tuesday it would launch desktop computers equipped with Blu-ray disk drives in June in Japan. Fujitsu will be the first company to offer PCs with BD drives. Toshiba recently launched Notebook PC with HD DVD-ROM Drive.

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Toshiba Launches World’s First Notebook PC with HD DVD-ROM Drive in Japan. “Qosmio G30/697HS” will be available in the Japanese market in mid May, as the latest product in Qosmio line-up of AV notebook PC series. Along with playback of HD DVD content, the new Qosmio can read and write to current DVD and CD discs, including DVD+/-R DL (dual-layer) and DVD-RAM.

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A surprising merger has been announced by BenQ, as Lite-On has acquired BenQ’s optical drive production unit for a strategic alliance. While the deal is extremely logical, due to the very competitive market and reduced margins, it still is somewhat surprising as BenQ has had a real impact on the industry with their extremely well performing drives. This move is good for Lite-On, as they have had problems delivering competitive products.

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FVD (forward versatile disc), Taiwan’s self-developed DVD standard, is getting a boost in the fight against EVD (enhanced versatile disc), a China-developed DVD standard, as Beijing E-World Digital Technology, a major promoter of the EVD standard, has defaulted on some loan payments and now stands to lose some of its patents, according to DigiTimes.

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