New Hard Drive Will Store Movies for Home Use

Sony Corp. and Western Digital Corp. said Tuesday that they’ll work together to develop a new hard disk drive that can store movies and music for use by home computers, televisions and other devices.

Sony, the No. 2 consumer electronics company, and Irvine-based Western Digital, the third-largest independent disk-drive maker, are betting that the booming use of the Internet and digital television will create a large market for devices that store films and music in the home. They plan to get the new product to market in 2000.

One of the first uses for the new disk drive is likely to be storage space for movies recorded off TV set-top cable boxes. That market is expected to surge as more people get digital films from their cable companies.

“Set-top boxes are the main market they are looking at,” said Jim Porter, president of Disk/Trend Inc., an industry consultant in Mountain View. “The question is how the couch potato will react--whether he will spend the money.”

The new storage devices will have to be inexpensive to be successful, Porter said. Digital set-top boxes that can access the Internet and get cable shows are cheaper alternatives to personal computers, so any storage device for the boxes will have to be less expensive as well, he said.

Beyond that, Sony and Western Digital want the new disk drive to become a “home server” that stores all sorts of information that can be tapped by set-top boxes and personal computers.

Sony and Western Digital are among many companies that envision networks of digital devices in the home. Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. are working on appliances that plug into the Internet, and executives at Intel Corp., the world’s largest chip maker, see the personal computer becoming a home server that will run all of a household’s electronics.

Sony and Western Digital said they’ll have a prototype designed by March, and the product will go on sale in 2000. Sony will work on digital video and audio processing for the unit, and Western Digital will work on designing the drive itself.

Sony is working with Western Digital rival Quantum Corp. on similar technology. Sony and Quantum said this month that they’ve developed a disk drive that can play one program while recording another, instantly replay a scene, and pause a live broadcast.

Shares of Western Digital rose 19 cents, to $15.81 in midafternoon trading. Shares of Tokyo-based Sony that are traded in the U.S. rose 13 cents, to $71.13.