Alpine will soon release a trio of new head-end units for vehicles geared primarily around the iPod, the company has unintentionally revealed through a brochure posted online.

The iDA-X100, based on the earlier X001, will be one of the first car stereos to support iTunes Tagging. When listening to specific HD Radio stations through the X100, listeners will be able to flag songs and use an attached iPod to sync this information with a computer, creating a playlist of songs to be bought through the iTunes Store. It can also play audio directly from newer iPods through a USB connection, including the iPod touch.

The single-slot unit also plays some more generic music handhelds and will recognize AAC, MP3, and WMA tracks from most any USB storage device. An optional IMPRINT processor dynamically adjusts sound to fit the acoustics of the car and can also be supported by adapters for satellite radio and Bluetooth audio from cellphones. It should be available by this spring and will be supported by the lower-cost X200, which omits iTunes Tagging, and the X300, which shares the same features but reduces the number of pre-amp outputs from three to one.

The listing also makes reference to a double-slot, 7-inch touchscreen stereo system known so far as the IVA-W505; though few details are revealed, the unit will play video from supporting iPods as well as raw DivX videos

Panasonic has started shipping samples of an ultra-thin Blu-ray disc drive for lightweight notebooks.

The new drive is capable of reading and burning high-definition DVDs in the Blu-ray format. It also supports reading and writing standard DVDs and CDs, and can store 50 Gbytes of content.Panasonic has slimmed down a standard DVD disc drive to 0.28 of an inch thick. Toshiba has said that it plans to release an equally thin drive for reading and writing DVDs in the HD DVD format, which competes with Blu-ray.

Ultra-thin disk drives make it possible for notebook makers to build even lighter and slimmer products. The drives could also find a place in even small ultra-mobile PCs.

Panasonic has other Blu-ray disc drives. Last summer, the company became one of the first to introduce a drive with a 4x writing speed. The latest drive is 2x.

Marvell today unveiled a new version of its TopDog wireless chipsets that could dramatically improve the speed of already fast 802.11n Wi-Fi connections. The 11n-450 will use three transmitters and three receivers to achieve a maximum speed of 450 megabits per second. The connection is 50 percent faster than the 300Mbps peak for today’s draft spec 802.11n chipsets and results in even more range: the new chip increases range by 160 percent over 300Mbps models and sports about five times more range than the earlier 802.11g standard, Marvell claims. The advancement should allow multiple streaming videos at once over longer ranges.The chipset is technically compatible with official 802.11n and earlier Wi-Fi standards but includes special features that should improve performance over other chipsets, such as Special Time Block Coding that maintains speed over longer distances. The chipset itself is made on a 90-nanometer process that should consume less power and generate less heat than most earlier wireless hardware.

Marvell plans to ship the new TopDog sometime in the spring and believes it will be used for notebook computers as well as media hubs, game consoles, and network routers; no specific companies have yet announced that they will use the technology.

Sony announced  the new 2.10 firmware for Playstation  3 now supports the playback of DivX and WMV media, whether directly from HDD or networked via DLNA. Unfortunately, at the moment, DivX 3.11 is not supported yet, as well as DRM WMV and media that is over 2GB in size. Additionally, Blu-Ray profile 1.1 is now supported.

Samsung Electronics Ltd. introduced its high capacity 2.5-inch hard disk drive, the Spinpoint M6 featuring 320GB of storage capacity. The new Spinpoint M6 HM320JI is a SATA hard drive designed for notebook PCs, as well as slim PCs and blade servers. With its ultra-high 320GB capacity, the Spinpoint M6 can store the most content of any 2.5-inch drive and is ideal for notebook users who need large storage space for videos, photos, music and multiple multimedia applications.

“As 2.5-inch hard drives move further beyond traditional notebook PCs and into more consumer electronics and enterprise applications, we have the storage solutions and higher capacity drives to meet all the needs of businesses and consumers,” said Andy Higginbotham, director of hard drive sales and marketing, Samsung Semiconductor. “With its massive 320GB capacity, the Spinpoint M6 can store 91,000 digital images, 100-hours of DVD movies, and 38-hours of HD movies.”