Sony has announced its first Sony Memory Stick PRO-HG media card, which will ship in August 2007. The Memory Stick PRO-HG, available in 1GB, 2GB and 4GB capacities, is a step-up of Sony"s Memory Stick PRO format – Sony claims it features 30MB/sec Read/Write speeds when combined with an ExpressCard adapter. Sony will also ship the Memory Stick Duo MSAC-EX1 ExpressCard adaptor, compatible with any notebook which includes an ExpressCard slot.
The company touted that one hour video taken by a Memory Stick HD Handycam in SP mode can be transferred to a PC in approximately two minutes. Not only does the new format allow a large amount of data to be quickly transferred, real-time recording of high-resolution video and still images is also made possible. Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo media are fully backward compatible with Memory Stick PRO host devices, and will also allow the user to achieve Read/Write speeds of 13MB/s with conventional Memory Stick PRO compatible devices.