"Consumer-electronics applications had better save this imploding sector," groans a man on a poster for an Internet company, as he laments his fantastic losses in disk-drive stocks. "Disk drives for video recording ought to be a practically limitless new market..." The much-hyped audiovisual (AV) drive has captured the attention of investors and consumers as they seek a panacea for the battered industry. All of the major manufacturers—Seagate, Quantum, Western Digital, and IBM—have announced AV drives and also have formed strategic partnerships within the consumer-entertainment industry. Are consumer-entertainment products the answer to the industry's troubles, or is this merely wishful dunking? And just what is an AV disk drive?
展开▼
