The Hitachi CinemaStar is an established family of hard disk drives with no less than five different models available. They are all targeted at consumer electronics (CE) applications, such as PVRs, DVRs and CCTV systems. Hence, they have a feature set that focuses on this segment :

- Optimized to record multiple, simultaneous video streams, Hitachi SmoothStream technology supports the ATA*7 streaming command set, and SCT provides time-limited error recovery and thermal monitoring capabilities. Because IT data and video streams have different throughput demands, AV-Zoning allows the definition of various error recovery procedures for predefined ranges of data blocks or zones to enable the system to effectively deliver critical data and time-sensitive video content from a single drive. Other features that help tailor this drive for streaming video applications include Read Continuous mode, which helps manage error recovery for video streams, and Media Maintenance enhancements, preventing track wear-out from around-the-clock operation.

- Leveraging eighth generation power management technology, as well as power-saving HiVERT innovations pioneered on Hitachi 2.5-inch notebook drives, this new CinemaStar hard drive provides up to 18% idle power savings over the previous model, delivering best-in-class power management and thermal emissions.

- All CinemaStar products are enhanced with silent-seek acoustics to deliver bedroom-quiet operation, and the Hitachi patented load/unload ramp mechanism that helps prevent disk wear and protects the disk during non-operation.

This review will be looking at one of Hitachi's latest 7200 RPM CinemaStar model - the 500 GB CinemaStar 7K1000.C hard disk drive. Let's take a look!