In light of the recent announcement from Pulstec about their stopping production of their DVD testing drives, Datarius will continue to support DVD test systems with Sony-based reference drive technology. Japanese Pulstec announced recently that it would discontinue the production of its DVD SDP-1000, SDP-2000 and SDP-2000R media testing drives, used in some of the Datarius media testing devices. According to the Pulstec announcement, they will take orders for its SDP series DVD drives only until January 2006.

Datarius announced that it will continue to offer support for its customers that currently use Pulstec-based equipment.

"DaTARIUS will undertake to work closely with Pulstec to ensure that all our Pulstec-based systems are given the usual high level of DaTARIUS customer support for many years to come," said Datarius CEO and chairman James Steynor adding that Datarius will offer maintenance on all drives until 2010.

Datarius will use drives by Sony for its future DVD media testers. The company began its co-operation with Sony some five years ago to develop a reference class DVD drive platform for its full range of pre-recorded and recordable DVD Analyzers. Products have been available in the market since 2002, offering proven spec-conform DVD drive technology that also operates at 4X.

"This focus on supporting drive technology as part of the DaTARIUS group is further demonstrated by initiatives for reference drives in our DaTABANK 'format-agnostic' test platform for both of the proposed third generation formats (BD and HD DVD)," Steynor concludes.