Sandisk and Sony develop Memory Stick Pro-HG format

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Yet another storage card format on the horizon, this time courtesy of Sandisk and Sony, who are taking Sony’s Memory Stick technology a step further with the Memory Stick Pro-HG format.

Although capacities aren’t mentioned as yet, Sony claims a growing demand for storing high-resolution digital photos, music and video content on portable devices, along with a demand for real-time recording and transfer of multiple gigabytes of data, means a new format is a necessity going into 2007.

The new media format uses an enhanced, 8-bit parallel interface in addition to a conventional serial and 4-bit parallel interface. The interface clock frequency also increases to 60MHz from 40MHz. This all means that maximum data transfer speed increases three times in comparison to the standard Memory Stick Pro and allows large data amounts of up to several gigabytes to be quickly transferred, as well as the real-time recording of high-resolution video and still images.

The bad news? Well, a new device will need to be purchased to use one. Although on a more positive note, you can still use your old Memory Stick Pro media with new devices. Licensing for the development of Memory Stick Pro-HG compliant host devices is scheduled to commence in January 2007.

Sony website

More storage:
Traxdata launches new range of SDHC cards
Jessops offers free online photo storage

Dave Walker
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