From Hitachi GST, New CinemaStar Hard Drives for A/V

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has added two drive families to its consumer electronic (CE) hard drives for the growing digital video recorder (DVR), IPTV set-top-box (STB), video surveillance and emerging hard drive-embedded TV markets.

Targeting CE needs, the drives include the 3.5-inch CinemaStar 5K2000 family, which brings 2TB and 1.5TB capacities, and the 2.5-inch CinemaStar C5K750 family with 750GB, 640GB and 500GB capacities.

Each stem from a long legacy of low power, barely audible and reliable line of hard drives, specifically optimized for the audio/video (A/V) market.

With multiple form factors to address a variety of needs, the CinemaStar family makes it possible for DVR manufacturers to broaden their product offerings to cover the entire spectrum of customer needs – from high capacity, high performance multi-function systems to more economical units – all using the same CinemaStar family of drives. This flexibility allows consumer electronics developers to select the CinemaStar drive that meets the cost, performance, power and capacity requirements of their product portfolio.

Hitachi GST continues to focus on developments of its CinemaStar drives with features like SmoothStream Technology, Coolspin Technology, A/V streaming performance enhancements, HiVERT Technology for power efficiency, and environmental optimization. Hitachi’s System Integration Test (SIT) Lab services, offered to global OEMs, also provide a team of professionals who perform testing and integration services to assist in specific HDD design and development requirements for digital entertainment.

2.5-inch CinemaStar C5K750 Family
Supporting multi-tuner HD streaming requirements, these 2.5-inch drives at 375GB per platter are dedicated high capacity solutions for manufacturers who wish to offer video recording and playback features in small form factor devices such as hard drive-embedded TVs and DVRs. The new CinemaStar C5K750 drives are Hitachi’s first CE drives in the market with Advanced Format, which increases the physical sector size on hard drives from 512 bytes to 4096 (4K) bytes. This helps utilize the storage surface area more efficiently, allowing for increased drive capacities and improved data integrity at higher storage densities.

With its reduced size, 0.5 watts (W) low power idle, 1.5W power during read/write operations, and barely audible 2.3 idle bels, consumers can enjoy smaller, quieter and more power efficient DVR solutions with enough capacity to store 187 HD videos or television shows. Its low-power profile also means the drive requires smaller power supplies and less cooling, which helps extend the life of the hard drive and the host product in a typical entertainment cabinet.

3.5-inch CinemaStar 5K2000 Family
With up to 2TBs of capacity, the 667GB per platter, 3.5-inch CinemaStar 5K2000 family with CoolSpin Technology provides A/V performance, low power and video capacity, enabling cable, satellite, STB and surveillance systems to digitally record and playback multiple video streams simultaneously. When set inside some of the DVR/PVRs in the market, these new 2TB drives allow users to store 1,000 more standard videos or 250 more HD videos than the previous generation 1TB CinemaStar drives.

The new CinemaStar 5K2000 drives are nearly silent at 2.4 bels during operation, draw 4.2W or less idle power, and generate less heat, which are critical factors when designing environmentally friendly digital video solutions.

"DVR capacity constraints are becoming more acute with the ever increasing appetite for on-demand entertainment and the desire to store – and never delete – recorded TV shows and movies," said Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing, Hitachi GST. "The good news is that our new CinemaStar drives provide a range of form factors and higher capacities designed for low power and quiet 24×7 operations to address key DVR requirements across a wide variety personal video recording devices."

The CinemaStar 5K2000 and C5K750 families are now shipping to customers worldwide.