Samsung's External TruDirect Slim DVD Writer Released

Samsung has announced the development of a slim, slot-in external optical disk drive, the SE-T084M/RSWD model, which comes to expand the company's TruDirect line of optical drives.

Through Samsung's TruDirect technology, users are allowed to create DVDs or burn digital content through a PC even if it doesn't feature a hard disk drive.

Samsung designed the External TruDirect drive to be able to work even without a power cord. With one, the optical drive weighs less than one pound. When users want to create a DVD movie using TruDirect, all they need to do is connect a digital video camera to the PC, press 'PLAY' on the camera, then click the TruDirect shortcut icon which appears in the TruDirect' program window, and, finally, click the 'RECORD' icon. No matter where you are, if you have a PC and TruDirect, you can set up a true DVD creation studio in no time.

The main advantage of accessing TruDirect SE-T084M is the smaller amount of time needed to create a DVD in comparison with using a hard disk drive. Some steps and inconveniences of the process - pre-mastering, multiplexing or hard-disk buffering - are eliminated this way, and real-time recording of personal videos, photos or data files onto DVD discs is enabled. The creation of a DVD of a one-hour video stream is generally a one-hour and five minutes process, while the creation of a DVD from a one-hour hard disk drive camcorder file of approximately 4.1GB takes only 30 minutes when using TruDirect SE-T084M.

The TruDirect SE-T084M does not feature only DVD creation, but also 8X DVD+R and DVD-R writing, 6X DVD+R and -R Dual Layer writing, and 5X DVD-RAM writing.

The TruDirect SE-T084M optical disc drive will arrive on the market in July 2008 at a suggested retail price of $149.

Samsung also plans to launch a combo drive in Q4 2008. The new device will feature read/write capabilities for DVDs and CDs, as well as reading Blu-ray discs. The company is also expected to launch a new write-capable Blu-ray drive. The write-capable Blu-ray drive will offer read/write functionality across all three media types.