Faster recordable DVD drives announced. (New Products & Services).

Several companies have announced new lines in recordable DVD media and hardware able to handle 4x write speeds:

* Philips (Netherlands; +31/20 59 77 914; www.philips.com) has unveiled its DVD+R/+RW PC drive, offering 4x write speed for DVD+R and 2.4x rewrite speed for DVD+RW. Mass production is set to begin early 2003.

* Similarly, Ricoh, one of companies developing DVD+RW, has announced next generation DVD/CD writable drives. New internal 4x speed PC drive allows 4.7Gb data to be burned onto 4x DVD+R disc and 4x DVD+RW disc in less than 15 minutes. Ricoh al