Going Hi-Def: Growth Opportunities are Crystal Clear for Storage Sweet spots in home entertainment and digital surveillance
Advances in digital technologies have made it easy for home users and businesses to create and consume digital content. Increasingly, more home users are turning to high-definition (HD) digital content as the platform offers the highest possible resolution that makes recreational movie-watching more compelling and enjoyable. Corporate users are also discovering the benefits of HD, especially when applied to the field of surveillance, as it captures more details and the quality of the images are not easily distorted.
Consumers are ready for HD TV. The move from Standard Definition to HD results in six times higher data rates and thus needs more storage.
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Tech-savvy users are spending more time on the Internet, thanks to mainstream PCs loaded with multimedia features. They are partly responsible
for fuelling the development of AV-styled home theatre PCs for the living room.
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More digital content are created with high-capacity devices such as high-resolution digital camcorders and megapixel digital cameras.
These rich content calls for higher storage capacities.
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More businesses are turning to digital surveillance to protect their business and to create a safe working environment for their employees.
Digital surveillance offers cost-savings over analogue methods.
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Seagate's Pipeline HD family, a range of specialized internal drives is designed to deliver levels of acoustic, power and vibration
performance for your high-definition needs.
Enjoy HD content from the comfort of home – An upward trend
Key trends in consumer electronics will impact the way consumers access and store their digital content: Multimedia capabilities on mainstream PCs,
proliferation of high-capacity digital devices and the growing popularity of high-definition TVs.
a) Multimedia capabilities on mainstream PCs
Most mainstream PCs now come with Media Center application that allows more consumers to share files, listen to the radio
and watch movie content on the PC platform. These tech-savvy users are partly responsible for fuelling the development of
AV-styled home theatre PCs for the living room, according to industry analyst, ABI Research.
b) Proliferation of high-capacity digital devices
Ordinary consumers are increasingly feeling the need for high-capacity storage. The proliferation of high-capacity devices -
high-res digital camcorders and megapixel digital cameras – captures richer content in HD and thus calls for higher storage
capacity.
c) Growing popularity of HD TVs
Screen Digest, an analyst firm, has identified three critical success factors that will support the successful migration to
HDTV: penetration of HD-ready displays, supply of HD content and HD channels, and the availability of HD broadcast on a
variety of television platforms. The firm thinks that these factors are in place to facilitate the adoption of HD TV in the long-term.
As more HD TVs find their way into homes, consumers have grown hungry for HD movies, as evidenced by the growth
in sales of HD-ready or full HDTVs in recent years. The move from Standard Definition to HD results in six times higher data rates
and greater storage capacities needed for video post production.
A niche market exists for AV dealers and custom installers for high-end whole-home AV solutions using highly customized and
specialized PC-based platforms, according to ABI Research. Seagate’s Pipeline HD family, a range of specialized internal drives
is designed to deliver levels of acoustic, power and vibration performance for high-definition digital video recorders (DVRs).
Find out more about Pipeline HD drive and its HD applications
here.
More companies are turning to digital surveillance to protect their business and to create a safe working environment
for their employees. With the convergence of video and information technology, networked video surveillance solutions
are quickly gaining ground.
According to analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan, the existing network of legacy analogue cameras is becoming expensive
and difficult to replace, thus paving the way for the deployment of digital video recorders that convert analogue images
into digital format for transmission over an IP network.
Video surveillance imaging technology itself is also undergoing a transformation, shifting from standard NTSC
and PAL television to HD and megapixel video. Cameras with HD capabilities are able to capture video in higher resolution,
resulting in video images that are at least 10 times more superior than traditional analogue cameras.
New features are also being incorporated in video surveillance equipment. Pan/tilt/zoom cameras track
incidents or people, and zoom in for a closer look by remote control or through in-built automation. New-generation
surveillance cameras now come with infrared light sources that enable them to work in pitch darkness and under harsh
outdoor environments.
All these features and demands in digital video surveillance call for a high-performing hard drive in the system.
Surveillance systems installed on office premises must run 24x7, and the reliability of the hard drive in the system
is critically important. The high-quality video must also be stored in an accessible manner without affecting an
organisations' IT structure. The basic requirements for such hard drives are high reliability, high-write duty cycles, and
optimization for data integrity and smooth video streaming.
This translates to demand for devices, such as Seagate's Pipeline HD line, a power-saving surveillance
storage solution that is suited for entry-level surveillance DVR systems. The Pipeline HD is designed for reliable 24x7
round-the-clock surveillance operations. Ideal for stand-alone applications, the Pipeline HD delivers power-efficiency
on read/write and support up to 16 simultaneous streams of high resolution (of 1.3 Megapixel) videos for smoother
recording and playback.
Discover Pipeline HD and Seagate's complete portfolio of industry-leading hard drives that are engineered for
specific surveillance applications here.
Key trends in consumer electronics will impact the way consumers access and store their digital content: Multimedia capabilities on mainstream PCs,
proliferation of high-capacity digital devices and the growing popularity of high-definition TVs.
More companies are turning to digital surveillance to protect their business and to create a safe working environment
for their employees. With the convergence of video and information technology, networked video surveillance solutions
are quickly gaining ground.
Video surveillance imaging technology itself is also undergoing a transformation, shifting from standard NTSC
and PAL television to HD and megapixel video. Cameras with HD capabilities are able to capture video in higher resolution,
resulting in video images that are at least 10 times more superior than traditional analogue cameras.
This translates to demand for devices, such as 
