REDMOND, Wash. and TOKYO, May 7
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. and
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic) today announced they are
expanding the HighMAT(TM) specifications to support all major writable DVD media
formats (DVD-RAM and other recordable DVD formats) for exchanging digital audio,
pictures and video files between personal computers and consumer electronics
devices in addition to CDs. The companies plan to support the new technology for
DVDs in their respective product lines. HighMAT stands for High-performance
Media Access Technology, which Microsoft and Panasonic jointly developed to make
organizing and accessing photos, music and video on storage media such as CDs
and DVDs easier and faster on a wide range of consumer devices.
In addition, Roxio Inc., maker of the
award-winning software CD/DVD burning product Easy CD & DVD Creator® for
Windows®, and Creative, a worldwide leader in digital entertainment solutions
for PC users, today announced their intent to support HighMAT in future
products. To date, 14 companies spanning content creation software publishers,
consumer device manufacturers and integrated circuit (IC) vendors have already
announced their intent to support HighMAT in their products.
"To let consumers more fully enjoy the
benefits of the dramatic shift in home video recording from videotape to DVDs,
Panasonic believes that adding support DVD format support to HighMAT technology
is essential," said Fumio Ohtsubo, managing director of Matsushita Electric. "By
adding HighMAT to DVD- RAM discs, we expect to expand user benefits and make it
easier for consumers to play back their favorite video, photo and multimedia
collections in a wide range of the latest consumer audio-video entertainment
devices. We are very pleased that Panasonic can contribute to realizing the
dream of seamless digital convergence, and we will join with Microsoft to
encourage widespread industry acceptance by other manufacturers."
"DVDs are the storage media of the
future, and as usage grows, adding HighMAT support will offer consumers better,
more predictable navigation and performance on consumer electronic devices,"
said Amir Majidimehr, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division at
Microsoft. "The continued adoption of HighMAT among a wide range of software and
consumer hardware companies illustrates how this new technology fulfills a key
need for easy access to the growing amount of personal digital memories and
music collections stored on home PCs."
DVD media, which offers more than seven times the data storage of CD
media, is emerging as a new medium for data storage, enabling PC users to store
a much larger collection of their home music, digital images and, in particular,
home movies. IDC predicts that worldwide DVD burner shipments will grow 140
percent to over 12 million drives in 2003.(1) Current HighMAT technology
specifications (version 1.0) will be updated to incorporate support for DVD
media by the end of 2003 to address this trend.
Source: Yahoo.com
