As we reported earlier, CD-ROM and DVD drives will be much faster in the forseeable future. The technology behind this improvement uses multiple laserbeams and is developed by Afreey, a Taiwanese technology company.
There might however be delay in releasing these new drives because Zen, that makes important parts for these drives has stopped giving free support to the manufacturers.
Actima crowed that it would "build the world's fastest DVD drive" in a press release dated 19 March 2001. "Development has started with Zen and production of a high-performance Actima Multibeam DVD-ROM drive is targeted for later this year." |
Nothing has appeared yet and Zen says that Actima has known for the last six months that it was going to pull free support. "We're in a tough market, it's not ideal for anyone," said Zen's director of investor relations Mark Way.
Actima's product was to involve the modification of its DVD-ROM mechanisms to accept Zen Multibeam pickups, and the development of a new PC board to accept Infineon's single-chip Multibeam DVD-ROM controller.
Source: TheRegister
