ESBuy.com Shipping Panasonic 4.7GB DVD-RAM Drive with USB 2.0 Interface; Rewritable DVD Drive Enhanced with Plug n' Play Convenience, Swapping Capabilities

Business Wire, May 22, 2001

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 22, 2001

Panasonic and ESBuy.com, an online mall that specializes in DVD-RAM products, announced today that ESBuy.com is among the first to ship Panasonic 4.7GB DVD-RAM drives with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 interface. By integrating USB 2.0 connectivity with the drive's rewritable DVD capabilities, ESBuy.com provides a plug n' play storage solution for corporate and home video development, secondary data storage, video clip and image archiving and backup/recovery. ESBuy.com makes the $580 package even more attractive by adding a complete suite of software, media, and free delivery within the continental U.S.

Featuring backward support for USB 1.1, the drive can be quickly connected to both current USB 1.1 and emerging USB 2.0 Windows(R) 95, 98, 2000 and Me-based computers as well as Macintosh(R) (8.0 and higher) systems.

The USB interface makes the drive hot-pluggable. Users can connect the drive or transfer it between USB-equipped computers without having to shut down or reboot the system. Once connected, the drive mounts automatically and is ready to use without any further setup procedures.

Ease of integration and the savings of being able to add numerous USB peripherals without having to add a power supply for each device have made USB extremely popular. According to analysts at Cahners In-Stat, USB 1.1 is included in 99 percent of PCs shipping today. The research firm also predicts that by 2004, there will be 750 million USB-equipped PCs and peripherals in use.

"Consumers, businesses and content professionals will move up to USB 2.0 because it provides a bandwidth of 480 Mbps -- up to 40 times faster than USB 1.1, which is 12 Mbps," explained Medi Vakili, ESBuy.com President. "The higher throughput will enable these users to move audio and video to and from their PCs much faster. But they won't want to store all of their videos or multimedia files on their hard drives permanently," he emphasized. "With the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive, users can substantially lower their storage costs while freeing valuable disk space and protecting their files from possible loss due to a system crash."

"By adding USB 2.0 to the Panasonic DVD-RAM, ESBuy.com has given users the freedom to share the drive between USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 systems and between desktop and notebook systems," said Dana Berzin, DVD product manager for Panasonic Industrial Company's Global Computer Group. "With USB connectivity, ESBuy.com's DVD-RAM drive can even overcome the cross-platform compatibility issues between USB-equipped Macs and PCs."

The DVD-RAM drive combines ease of use and the random-access performance of a hard drive with a transfer rate of up to 22.16Mb/sec -- fast enough to play back MPEG-2 video without dropping frames. With random-access, users can access specific files or video frames almost instantly. The rewritability and random-access also make DVD-RAM an excellent solution for backup and fast data recovery.

A 4.7GB single-sided DVD-RAM disc stores up to two hours of digital video, ten hours of digital audio, 136 high-resolution color photos, 1,600 256-color VGA screen captures or up to 2.6 million pages of text for less than a penny per Megabyte. The highly reliable media has built-in error correction and provides more than 100,000 write/rewrite cycles.

In addition to writing and reading 2.6GB, 5.2GB, 4.7GB and 9.4GB DVD-RAM media, Panasonic's rewritable DVD drive reads from discs currently accepted by CD-ROM, CD Audio, CD-R, CD-RW and video CD drives at up to 24x speed. It also reads DVD-R and DVD-ROM discs at up to 6x speed. When the host computer is equipped with an MPEG decoder (also available from ESBuy.com), the drive can be used for DVD video playback.

Pricing, Availability

ESBuy.com is offering the Panasonic 4.7/9.4GB USB2 DVD-RAM drive with free delivery within the continental U.S. from its web site, www.esbuy.com. Priced at $580, the external drives ship complete with software drivers for PC and Macintosh operating systems, DVD editing software and Universal Disk Format (UDF) formatting software, one 9.4GB DVD-RAM disc and a DVD movie. Additional Panasonic DVD-RAM media is available, including single-sided 4.7GB discs, double-sided 9.4GB discs and 2.6/5.2GB discs. ESBuy.com also offers the Panasonic 4.7/9.4GB DVD-RAM drive with FireWire(R) support for $539.

About ESBuy.com Inc.

ESBuy.com, a subsidiary of ElegantShopping.com Inc., is primarily a computer peripheral shopping site specializing in high-end DVD-RAM, CDRW, and DVD-ROM products and notebooks. ESBuy.com customers range from corporations and educational institutes to government and individual users. For more information, contact ESBUY.com , 3151 Airway Ave Building E2, Costa Mesa, CA 92626; 714-546-8192, Fax 714-557-8192 E-mail Tina@Esbuy.com or visit their site http://www.esbuy.com

About Panasonic

Panasonic is the best known brand name of Osaka, Japan-based Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE:MC), one of the world's leading producers of electronic and electric products for consumer, business and industrial use. Additional information on Panasonic and Matsushita Electric is available at www.panasonic.com.