A Tape Drive for MPEG-2 Streams

Bob Emmerson

Exabyte's Eagle DM-1 tape drive is a low-cost, high-capacity storage solution for stand-alone PCs as well as networked servers. Because it can record high-speed sources with variable data rates such as MPEG-2 video streams, you may eventually see it attaching to digital set-top boxes and Internet TVs as well. Another interesting application may be a PC video board converting TV signals into MPEG-1 and the Eagle DM-1 storing the data stream -- in real time.

The system is brand new. Expect to see the first available systems early next year on the shelves of your local computer dealer.

Its miniature cartridges can store up to 26 GB at a data transfer rate of up to 4 MBps (for compressed data). This o utstanding performance matches the requirements of video servers, and the price of around $500 puts it within reach of consumers, who can use the tape drive for backing up hard drives and also for recording up to 7 hours of digital video. The device connects to a PC via SCSI-2, but it will eventually support USB and FireWire interfaces.

The Eagle DM-1's magnetic head reads and writes eight parallel tracks simultaneously and has 24 vertical positions, so there are 192 tracks on the 8-mm tape. Positioning of the heads therefore has to be accurate to within a few micrometers.

The core of this multipurpose recording engine called DigaMax was developed by Philips. It uses a file system so that a standard PC can access it as just another drive. The file-system drivers for Windows 95 and NT allow a local hard drive to work as a cache for the tape, delivering excellent random-access times for on-line storage of, for example, Web pages containing video and audio streams or full-length digital feature films tra nsmitted over satellite or cable.

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Where to Find

Eagle DM-1......................around $500
Exabyte Corp.
Utrecht, The Netherlands
Phone:    +31 30 245 8800
Fax:      +31 30 258 1582
Enter 1014 on Inquiry Card.

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The Eagle Has Landed

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