Seagate has announced a new line of drives that are slated to offer a capacity of 2 trillion Bytes (2TB) - eventually. The first Constellation drives are expected to start shipping sometime during the first quarter of this year. But unlike the Western Digital Caviar Green drives which can already be pre-ordered from many vendors, the actual 2TB capacity Seagate drives may not ship until late summer.
The 2.5″ drives to be released first will feature capacities up to 500GB and be offered with either a SATA or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface. Like Western Digital, Seagate is promoting their new drives’ power efficiency. As of yet though it’s difficult to make a comparison between the two since Seagate hasn’t released many specifics.
Based on what little information is available on their website the new drives appear to be comparable to or slightly worse than Western Digital’s existing drive lines. While they claim their new PowerChoice techology gives them “the highest power-reduction savings ever offered in an enterprise-class HDD,” looking at the specs for their current products that makes sense. They already appear to use about 20% more power than comparable Western Digital units.
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Apple has announced that all four of the major TV broadcasters; ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC, have agreed to offer programming in HD on the company’s iTunes platform.
The shows will cost $2.99, a premium over the $1.99 for standard definition and the company says there are about 600 shows available in HD on iTunes now.
Since Apple announced limited HD programming last month, they have sold over 1 million HD shows, most being NBC content that returned to the store after a one year absence.
A few of the new notable shows added are ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Eli Stone,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Life on Mars,” “Lost,” “Private Practice,” “Samantha Who?” and “Ugly Betty.” CBS programming includes “CSI,” “CSI: Miami,” “CSI: New York,” “NCIS” and “Numb3rs.” FOX shows include “Bones,” “House,” “Prison Break” and “Sons of Anarchy,” from FX.
Although I am sure the shows will sell extremely well, I’m not sure I understand why when pretty much all the content is available for free (with limited ads), and in HD, elsewhere on sites such as Hulu.
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Netflix has made agreements with both Disney and CBS to have content from both studios streamed on its Instant Watch service.
A few of the notable shows from the deals are NCIS, Numb3rs , Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, The Suite Life on Deck and the entire CSI franchise.
Netflix currently has 12,000 titles in their streaming inventory and says the new agreements will add “meaningfully” to that number.
“We are thrilled to enter into these relationships with CBS and Disney Channel and build upon their innovative distribution strategies,” added Robert Kyncl, VP of content acquisition for Netflix in a statement.
Netflix says there will be access to 500 Disney episodes and 350 CBS episodes to start.
