Seagate ships first consumer electronics hard drives using new video streaming industry standard

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Sept 1, 2003

Seagate (NYSE: STX) is shipping its new Consumer Electronics (CE) hard drives to eight of the world's leading Digital Video Recorder (DVR) device makers: Toshiba, Thomson, Sony, Pioneer, Pace, Nokia, Motorola and Echostar. A result of Seagate's close collaboration with top CE companies, Seagate's new CE hard drives are the industry's first to implement the new ATA standard streaming command set adopted by the T-13 committee as the new industry standard. Because of the Company's unique design, manufacturing and customer-focused processes, Seagate is the hard drive supplier that global CE brands want to work with.

"Seagate drives have been at the heart of the consumer electronics revolution since it's beginning in 1997," said Brian Dexheimer, executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. "Based on our intimate customer relationships over the years, in development meetings and at our CE Design Service Centers, we developed these drives to deliver the features CE manufacturers asked for--quiet acoustics, high reliability and top streaming performance. These Seagate CE drives are also compatible with ATA/7 standard firmware, providing flexibility to CE OEMs who want to optimize the drive for their application. And Seagate consumer electronics engineers are ready to help solve HDD integration issues through Design Service Centers. Seagate is the only hard drive company to provide consumer electronics manufacturers with a comprehensive partnership--products, technology and services."

Seagate's new CE hard drives are based on industry standards, rather than proprietary solutions, built from the ground up to be compatible with the new ATA/7 streaming commands standards. Customers told Seagate they no longer want to choose between varied, incompatible methods for ensuring reliable video streaming in digital video recording devices. Seagate's ATA/7-compatible streaming commands give CE manufacturers greater flexibility in tuning the drive for best results with specific applications.

With easy-to-use stream management commands, Seagate's CE drives are optimized for the sequential work of streaming continuous A/V files. This delivers more consistent video streaming performance than PC hard drives designed for fragmented text-based documents. CE manufacturers also require that A/V streaming be a higher priority than the repetitive error-checking procedures used in PC applications, which slow down video streaming. Seagate's CE drives are optimized for A/V streaming performance, with manufacturer-defined error-checking parameters for smoother streams.

Seagate also designed these new drives to meet CE power requirements. Seagate CE drives' power management technology uses less peak power at startup than other drives in their class, allowing DVR manufacturers to use less expensive components in their power architecture. Seagate drives are also the world's quietest, for pure audio enjoyment with virtually no discernible operating sound. And the rugged design of Seagate drives delivers high non-operating shock tolerance and low failure rates.

Seagate has successfully deployed the new CE technologies its customers asked for--leveraging the unique design, manufacturing, and customer-focused business processes that have made it the world's number-one hard drive maker. Seagate's Advanced Manufacturing initiative gives customers flexibility--automated factory lines can adapt within hours to meet unexpected requirements during a sudden demand swell for a popular CE system. Seagate's global supply chain processes provide Six Sigma-proven methodologies to ensure that when DVR manufacturers are on the production line, the hard drives will be there as well.

Seagate Design Service Centers (DSC) continues the Company's leadership helping CE manufacturers optimize their mechanical, electronic, and software environments to take better advantage of the hard drive. DSC increases reliability, speeds time-to-market, and decreases development costs. DSC can also help with compatibility testing between the hard drive and optical storage vendors whose products are also becoming integrated into DVR units.

Seagate's specialized CE hard drives and unique CE services provide storage for the new world of digital entertainment, enabling personal video recorders (PVR), video game consoles, audio jukeboxes, home media centers and networked entertainment systems.

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide range of Enterprise, PC, Notebook and Consumer Electronics applications. The Company is committed to delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability, to meet the world's growing demand for information storage.