Not much big news here, just that Teac is coming out with a 8x DVD drive that writes DVD-R too. I guess I decided to post this because Teac actually sells their drives Stateside? IO Data has had their drive out in Japan, but since IO Data doesn't sell their products in the USA, then it's not so useful to you is it.

Teac Systems Create Corporation (a.k.a. "Teac") will release the 8x DVD±R drive "DV-W58DK" in the back part of January 2004. It's officially Open Price, but indicators suggest it will cost around 23,000 yen.

It is an internal ATAPI DVD±R drive that supports writing both DVD+R and DVD-R at 8x. In addition to writing DVD±R at 8x, it writes DVD±RW at 4x, and CD-R/RW at 24x. It has a 2MB buffer. And about the DVD±R media supporting 8x...Teac plans o­n publicly releasing their verification results o­n their homepage.

And although the DVD Forum has not finished standardizing 8x DVD-R, Teac has said "The specifications are basically hardened...the DV-W58K will support them."

Included software is the video editing software "VideoStudio 7 SE," DVD authoring software "DVD MovieWriter Advance SE," writing software "Burn.Now," and DVD playback software "DVD Player." Supported operating systems are Windows ME, 2000, and XP.

Original Article:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20031225/tsc.htm

News Release:
http://www.tsc.teac.co.jp/release/dvw58dk-news.html