Sony Woos Mac Users with DVD Burner

Sony (NYSE: SNE) today announced plans to release a new dual-format DVD burner and guess what: It's Mac-compatible.

Stephen Baker, the director of industry analysis at the NPD Group, said peddling Mac-compatible digital video products is a good move for Sony.

"The perception is that higher-end Mac users would be doing some extra work with DVDs and they may be more receptive to the 8.5 gigabyte sizes," Baker said. "Dual-layer may appeal to Mac users even more than it might appeal to the PC community."

DV-Details

The DRX-710UL-T, Sony's external double layer DVD drive, will allow Mac users to record up to four hours of high-quality MPEG-2 video or up to 8.5 GB of data, music and/or images on compatible DVD media for audio/visual projects and back ups.

The drive also features a unique vertical design for easy placement and portability, and offers connectivity with both i.LINK and hi-speed USB digital interfaces.

Roxio's Play

Roxio's Toast 6 Lite is included with the drive to give Mac users the ability to create one-click copies of CDs, DVDs and disc images, as well as standard audio CDs with CD-TEXT from nearly any QuickTime audio file.

"Sony continues to be a forerunner in DVD technology, and by including Toast 6 Lite with our external DVD drives, we can now offer Mac customers a complete solution for DVD and CD burning, as well as satisfy their needs for higher capacity, double layer disc recording," Robert DeMoulin, marketing manager for branded storage products in Sony Electronics' IT Products Division, said.

In addition to the Toast application, the drive will come bundled with a full-featured software suite from Nero for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

The drive supports 2.4X DVD+R DL, 16X DVD+R, 8X DVD-R, 4X DVD+/-RW, 48X CD-R and 24X CD-RW recording speeds. The DRX-710UL-T model will be available in December for about US$230. For information on features and specification, click here.