CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Western Digital's Raptor X
Earlier this week Western Digital announced the availability of their latest Raptor drive, with a capacity of 150GB thanks to its two 74GB platters. The 150GB Raptor is available today with a MSRP of $299.
At CES, Western Digital announced a second version of the 150GB drive called the Raptor X. Mechanically the Raptor X is identical to the first 150GB drive, the only difference is that the Raptor X features a window letting you see the spinning platters, read/write heads and actuator arm in action.
Other than the window, the rest of the specs of the drive are identical to its non-flashy brother. You get a 16MB buffer, 5 year warranty and of course, a 10,000RPM spindle speed. The Raptor X should be available in about 2 weeks for $349 while the normal 150GB version is available now for $299.
You can see a picture of the drive in action above, although for better pictures and more information on the new Raptor X you should head over to WD's site dedicated to the drive - www.wdraptorx.com.
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JarredWalton - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Looks fine for me with Firefox 1.07, but Internet Explorer is all messed up. The odd thing is that it's only *this* article that's having problems.Oop... found the issue. The article description had a double-quote in it, and changing that to " fixed the problem. Thanks for pointing this out!
tuteja1986 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28840">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28840world largest is panasonic not samsung :)
Samsung 102"
Panasonic 103"
So as you can see Panasonic wins by 1" ...lol
Cygni - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I just cant see how anybody really expected HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to be a success, to be quite honest. They seem to be expecting everyone to dump all their "old school" DVD's to pick up the SAME titles in the new formats, like most people eventually did with the VHS->DVD move... but i think its quite obvious that there just isnt any motivation to DO that this time.Can you say Laserdisc anybody? I just dont see Blu-Ray or HD-DVD taking off like they think it will. Will they stick around in the long run, unlike Laserdisc? Probably, simply because the added storage will be useful in the long long run and the discs/drives should eventually be dirt cheap... but they ARENT going to be a run away, must upgrade success. Thats for sure.
And when can i get a 103" OLED display? :p
Chadder007 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
:werd:I thought this was hillarious
Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD will be a failure.
sprockkets - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
It just confirms what I have been saying, recording HDTV to DVD on 720x480 doesn't look that much worse than it coming on 1920x1080 live.Sure the original was smoother and clearer, but, it wasn't mind blowing, and if I didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't notice the difference either.
gsellis - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
First, thanks to the AT crew for going out of their way on such a horrible journey to cover this event. We all know you had to suffer to do it, but anything for the AT user's, right? ;)On the DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray compare, their content did not show much difference because of the source. The played content was probably film of Pro-HD and compressed to MPEG or HD codec with a high-end encoder (the reds in that closest did not appear to be crushed as much as a standard encoder would do with something like DV content.) It looks like the source was at least 4:2:2 and maybe 4:4:4.
If the sources had been DV vs HDV, their would have been a little more dramatic. And as noted, if it had been compared to NTSC 480i, it would have also been more dramatic.
But, you are very correct in that this is not VHS-DVD where the quality jump is higher and the feature set is bigger. DVD is non-linear in how you can view content compared to tape and the big bonus was adding the bonus material. The bonus material is already there, so what can they add to really make it worth it? Especially when the players can do upconverts? And 720p movies fit on DL DVD-ROM already.
OK, (maybe coining a new twist on an old term or it probably has be done) having a Blue disc player and replacing your DVD library makes your v-penis(tm) bigger :p
MrSmurf - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
You can play your current DVDs in the newer standards. I think both will have moderate success on the PC once the price goes down due to their size but it'll be some time both stand alone players even put a dent in the market.Xenoterranos - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Hellz yeah. I wouldn't mind that 82 in LED lit LCD either, probably the closest you can get to a big screen OLED screen right now.OddTSi - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Someone please fix the page formatting. Everything is all over the place.JarredWalton - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Should be fixed now.