Verbatim has announced its plans to release a new 500 GB portable hard drive for later this year. Aside from carrying some of the more standard features of the SmartDisk line, this new drive will also carry a reasonable price tag. Details are available in the full article.

The reason why we take all those pictures is to make sure our memories will be preserved, and last over time. But will our current DVD discs be able to last a century or two, just enough for our descendants to know about our memories? Mitsubishi, the maker of the awesome 3D Blu-ray players, is developing the key in making our memories last for a long time: the Arledia DVD-Rs. Read more about it in the full article.

It was announced by Verbatim and its parent company Mitsubishi Kagaku Media that they will be releasing the world's first Mini Blu-ray Recordable/Rewriteable (BD-R/RE) media.

These disks are three inches in diameter with a storage capacity of 7.5GB. The manufacturers say that it provides one hour of continuous video capture time on a single side at a resolution of 1920x1080i. If you choose to record at 1440x1080i, then you can even get as much as two hours of video capture time. 

The disks will be made available this August in Japan where it will be launched along with the new Hitachi BD-compatible camcorder which uses the said media. North America doesn't have to worry about being left out because Verbatim will also be providing the disks in the U.S. as soon as the new BD-compatible camcorders become available locally.

If that's not enough to make you want it, the disks will also be coated with the proprietary hard-coat finish of the Verbatim BD media which is said to provide "superior anti-static and anti-scratch properties for added protection against scratches, fingerprints and dust particles".

Just like Blu-ray, HD DVD announced the release of a recordable media before burners are even revealed. Early this month, Hitachi and Mitsubishi announced that July 5 will see the entry of 15GB HD DVD-R media in Japan. They promised that the RW and dual-layer versions will also be coming out later in the summer. They stayed true to their words.

Although the HD DVD-RW has not been announced yet, Mitsubishi reveals that a 30GB dual-layer HD DVD-R will surely come out next month. The single-sided media can hold 150 minutes of HD content encoded at a 24Mbps playback rate. Mitsubishi highlighted the fact that the coming dual layer disc uses high-sensitivity dye for accurate recording on both the near-side and inner storage layers. Just like Blu-ray discs, the HD DVD discs will include the AACS copy-protection technology.

Verbatim may soon offer the 15GB and 30GB HD DVD-R discs in the future as the company is owned by Mitsubishi.