TDK in Cebit 2001 - Page 1

Recorders

TDK had a big booth in Cebit 2001 presenting mostly the new line of media among with the whole series of CD recorders among with the new "ML" multi-level recording.

- TDK CyClone 241040:

This is the fastest TDK CDR-W drive and supports 24x writing (Zone-CLV), 10x re-writing and 40x reading. The drive supports "BURN-Proof 2" and based upon Sanyo CRD-BP1500P. You should expect it at May/June 2001 at a price of 360Euro. Attached CDR Software would be Nero 5.5 OEM and TDK's Digital MixMaster (the demo version we watched was very impressive).

- TDK ML Recorder:

The drive seemed like a normal CyClone drive with a different green "colour" logo, in the front, and a colour label with the "TDK-AI-CDRW-ML-X" code name upon it. The idea behind MultiLevel recording seems very nice since it can multiple by X 3 times the capacity of the current CD/DVD media without special modifications (at least according to TDK). TDK is a special presentation showed that the "ML" recording is possible with a very big prototype machine to various other manufactures...

How it works exactly? If we understood correctly, the "ML" technology allows 3 shades of light in the same area, in which with the normal CD/DVD recording you will have only one. That means in the same space you can fit more data ( X 3 times) recorded in the same time! So a 12x CDR-W drive will become a 36x "ML CDR-W" drive and write up to 2GB in 6minutes (at 36x writing speed). The same principal goes on for 16x CDR-W drive - 48x (=3*16x) ML CDR-W drives and so on...

TDK said that this technology could be applied in the DVD area. For example the 4.7GB DVD-R media can jump up to 14.1GB (=4.7*3) if the "ML" recording adopted from manufacturers. TDK said that this would be possible without changing the pickups or the laser. You will have to add another extra IC chipset for the math calculations. That means the price of the "ML" recorder would be slight higher than the normal CDR-W drive (10-20%). However engineers from other companies said that you will have to change laser and pickup for adopting "ML" recoding...

What about the media? The TDK showed both "CD-R2GB" and "CD-RW2GB" media. According to the TDK "...ML discs maintain the cost-per-megabyte efficiencies of conventional CD-R and CD-RW discs and ML drives retain backward compatibility with conventional CD-R/RW recording, enabling users to keep CD's universal compatibility when so desired...":

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- TDK CyClone 161040 external:

TDK will ship a new external 16x writer based upon the successful TDK 161040 model for the users who wish a reliable full size portable solution. The drive supports 16x writing, 10x re-writing and 40x reading. The drive will support FireWire and USB 2.0 interface and will ship around Q2 of 2001.

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- TDK CyClone 8824:

This is the first TDK external slim CDR-W drive. The drive supports 8x writing, 8x re-writing and 24x reading. The "BURN-Proof 2" is used to avoid buffer underrun errors and the connecting interfaces would be FireWire and USB 2.0. It expected to arrive in the market around Q3 of 2001.

The drive seems to be based upon Plextor's portable solution (not 100% sure about this).

- TDK CyClone 121024:

This is another external half height TDK recorder. The drive supports 12x writing, 10x re-writing, 24x reading and has "BURN-Proof 2" to avoid buffer underruns. The design of the drive seems very impressive with the usual blue and grey colours which TDK drives use.

- TDK 121032:

This is the entry-level recorder for the amateur user since it will have a very attractive price among with interesting features: 12x writing, 10x re-writing, 32x reading and "JustLink" anti-coaster technology. The interface still remains ATAPI and seems based upon Ricoh MP7125A, which already we have tested.