View Shopping Cart
Sonic / About / Press / News
Hitachi Chooses Sonic for Consumer PCs

Sonic DVDit!® and Hitachi PC Bundle Make Home DVD Recording Easy

Marin County, California (February 11, 2002) – Sonic Solutions [NASDAQ: SNIC], the world leader in DVD creation applications, announced today that its Sonic DVDit! software is being bundled with Hitachi’s [NYSE: HIT] personal computers marketed in Japan to home users who want a fast and easy way to make their own DVD-Video discs from programs they record on TV. Bundled with Hitachi’s 550V5SV, 550V5SVE, 570A5SV, 570A5SVE, 750V5PV, 750V5SV, 770A5SV, 770B5SV, and 770B5SVE PC products, Sonic DVDit! LE provides Hitachi’s customers with a complete recording, editing and DVD publishing solution.

"The addition of DVDit! LE provides Hitachi PC users with a powerful, yet easy solution for creating professional-looking DVDs right on their desktop," said Koki Terui, Senior Vice President of Pacific Rim Operations at Sonic Solutions. "Sonic is extremely pleased that DVDit! will play a key role as Hitachi’s PC changes the way people record and archive their favorite TV shows as well as create and distribute their personal home movies.”

"Sonic DVDit! is the key ingredient in making our PCs a complete home DVD recording solution,” said Kenichi Koizumi, Department Manager, Media Appliance Department at Hitachi. "Combining the advanced DVD publishing features found in Sonic DVDit! with the high performance of our PC creates a powerful, highly-productive recording, editing and DVD publishing environment."

Starting at 299,800 Yen ($2,300 US), Hitachi’s PC is currently available in Japan.

About Sonic DVDit!
Sonic DVDit! is the easiest way to publish on DVD. Combining a simple and straightforward user interface with Sonic's award-winning DVD formatting technology, DVDit! gives video professionals, graphic designers, artists and video enthusiasts the power to create stunning interactive DVD content on their PC.

DVDit! is compatible with AVI and QuickTime video files, so that virtually any video content - from DV to D1 - can be incorporated into a DVDit! project. With an intuitive interface, building DVD titles is as easy as selecting a menu background and then dragging and dropping an AVI, QuickTime or MPEG video file.

DVDit! automatically builds buttons and interactivity, multiplexes and formats content, and records to CD-R or DVD-R for playback in consumer set-top DVD players or DVD-equipped PCs. DVDit! can create interactive titles in DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, and cDVD™ formats.

Sonic DVDit! has been honored with awards by many of the video industry's leading trade publications including Millimeter magazine's Tommy Award, Television Broadcast's Pick of Show, DV Magazine's Award of Excellence, a perfect score review in PC Magazine, and Authoring Product of the Year from Videomaker Magazine.

About the Hitachi 770B5SV
The Hitachi 770B5SV personal computer allows users to create DVDs from their favorite TV program recordings – up to 40 hours of television can be recorded. Because both DVD-RAM/R and CD-R/RW drives are installed, users can easily edit their videos and create DVDs that can then be played back on many set-top DVD players. The MPEG-2 encoder included with the PC allows users to enjoy TV programs. In addition, the 770B5SV includes a 1.7 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor and a 24x speed CD-R/RW drive.

About Hitachi
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended March 31, 2001) consolidated sales of 8,417 billion yen ($67.9 billion[a]). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.
[a] At an exchange rate of 124 yen to the dollar.

About Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC)
Based in Marin County, California, Sonic (http://www.sonic.com) is the world’s leading manufacturer of solutions for DVD creation. Sonic MyDVD™ (http://www.mydvd.com) is the first DVD authoring application for consumers, and is the leading DVD solution among DVD recorder and PC manufacturers. Sonic DVDit!® (http://www.dvdit.com) is the leading DVD authoring application for videographers and corporate video producers; more than 1 million copies of DVDit! have been sold. Sonic DVD Creator®, Sonic Scenarist®, Sonic ReelDVD™ and Sonic DVD Fusion are the most widely-used systems for professional DVD publishing, and are installed worldwide at major studios, post production facilities and in corporate marketing departments. Sonic is a full voting member of the DVD Forum, the standards-setting body for the DVD format.

Sonic Solutions, the Sonic logo, DVD Editing, MyDVD, and ReelDVD are trademarks of Sonic Solutions. AuthorScript, Sonic DVD Creator, DVDit!, Scenarist, and SonicStudio are registered trademarks of Sonic Solutions. All other company or product names are trademarks of their respective owners and, in some cases, are used by Sonic under license. Specifications, pricing and delivery schedules are subject to change without notice.