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Iomega Corp. will begin shipping a dual-layer, 12X DVD+R burner in June, the company said Monday.
Ben-Q of America also announced its own dual-layer 12X burner Monday, with specifications that are similar to Iomega's drive. Iomega did not manufacture its own drive, so it's possible that the two drives were originally manufactured by the same source.

The additional recording layer will mean that users will be allowed to burn up to 8.5 GB of data on a single-sided disc, the company said. However, Iomega, like its competitors, could suffer from a lack of available media.

The company will not bundle a recordable disc with the drive, forcing users to source their own dual-layer media when it becomes available. Iomega executives say the drive is compatible with all single-layer DVD+R media, however.

The Iomega Super DVD Writer 12x Dual-Format USB 2.0 Drive, as the company is calling it, will be priced at about $249.95.

Burning a single disc full of data on both layers will take about an hour. Richard Giannini, a product manager for branded solutions for Iomega, said the drive burns the top layer at 12X speeds, but the player must slow down to penetrate the second layer, which records data at an effective speeds of 2.4X.

The drive, designed for both Windows PCs and Macs, includes copies of Iomega's DVD Solutions Wizard, Iomega Automatic Backup, Iomega HotBurn Pro, Sonic MyDVD video-editing software, Sonic Cineplayer software for the highest quality video playback, MusicMatch Jukebox music management software and Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. For Mac OS users, Charismac Discribe and MusicMatch software are included. However, Mac users must have Mac OS 10.2.7 and a Mac with USB ports. Currently, the Iomega drive does not include a FireWire connection.

The DVD+R standard is incompatible with DVD-R and DVD-RW discs. The DVD+RW Alliance, whose members include Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi Chemical/Verbatim, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson, Yamaha and Microsoft.

Iomega executives declined to comment on whether the new Super DVD Writer 12X was merely a rebadged version of Iomega's drive.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...129TX1K0000532

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