E4 announced a DVD-ROM upgrade kit for the Macintosh that will allow Mac owners to upgrade their internal CD-ROM
drives to DVD (digital versatile disc).
DVD-ROMs hold enough data for full-length film, videos, and interactive games with full-motion video. The technology is gaining popularity and is widely expected to replace CD-ROM, which has much less data storage capacity, 650MB compared with 4.7GB.
The drive operates using the SCSI interface. E4 previously released a DVD upgrade kit for Macs based on the IDE hard drive interface. SCSI is the standard Mac hard drive interface and is generally thought to be a more robust standard requiring more system resources than the IDE interface.
"The introduction of the...kit now provides more than 4 million Mac OS
computers an opportunity to enjoy DVD for the first time," said John Chan,
director of product marketing for E4, in a prepared statement.
The CoolDVD Mac SCSI DVD-ROM upgrade features multiple language capability and subtitle support and includes several free DVD titles.
E4 will begin shipping the upgrade kit on June 15 to retail and direct
sales channels. The kit will have an estimated retail price of $549.