Matsushita Chooses Seagate Hard Drive for its New ep Station Set-Top Box
Reprinted from a Panasonic (Matsushita) press release:
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., April 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. , best known for its Panasonic brand of Consumer Electronics (CE) products, has chosen Seagate Technology’s Barracuda ATA IV hard drive for its groundbreaking new set-top box, the ep Station, manufactured for ep Corporation. The ep Station TV set-top box offers Personal Video Recording over satellite broadband, interactive access to video and audio broadcasting, online gaming, email and banking. Seagate’s Barracuda ATA IV is not only a fast 7,200-rpm hard drive, but it’s also the quietest available. It’s remarkably suited for TV applications that access many functions but still fit silently into living rooms and bedrooms. In addition, Seagate drives support the unique AV streaming commands required by Matsushita’s ep Station. Seagate is the world’s leading hard drive supplier for Consumer Electronics.
Seagate helped Matsushita test and implement ep Station design plans at the Company’s exclusive Design Service Center (DSC) for Consumer Electronics in Longmont, Colorado. Seagate’s DSC helps CE partners design, develop and integrate new kinds of devices that bring storage to consumer living rooms. DSC can save customers thousands of dollars in outsource test time and decrease the need to invest in costly test equipment.
“More and more, TVs, game machines and audio components are using hard drives for storage,” said Joel Stead, Seagate senior vice president of Worldwide Sales and Marketing. “A new need for high-performance Barracuda ATA IV hard drives in CE is emerging — in Matsushita’s ep Station it gives users rapid access to many applications that bring entertainment and the Internet straight to the TV screen. As CE applications evolve, new requirements arise — and Seagate develops and delivers the storage to fit each specific need.”
The Barracuda ATA IV hard drive is now recognized as a unique answer for a new breed of high-powered CE applications, joining Seagate’s U Series hard drive, which has also been widely adopted by the CE industry and is used by all of the top ten Consumer Electronics makers. The Barracuda ATA IV ships with Seagate’s SoftSonic motors and is the industry’s quietest hard drive. Yet the drive is fast enough to copy an hour of MP3 music in under one second, and fast enough to stream eight movies simultaneously, in DVD quality, without dropping a frame.
Today, hard drives help people control their TVs with Personal Video Recorders, their music in digital jukeboxes, and the immersive game experiences of the Xbox. Now, with Seagate drives in the ep Station, consumers can control video, music and communication all in one device.