At the 2006 International CES held here this week, the SD Card Association (SDA) announced it expects to finalize specifications for a new, high-capacity SD Memory Card -- the SDHC Memory Card -- in early 2006. The new specification will expand SD card capacity beyond 2GB, to meet the memory-hungry requirements of a new generation of audio/video and telecommunications devices -- from camcorders to cell phones and computers, digital still cameras to plasma televisions and PDAs, among others.

"Consumers are demanding new capabilities of their digital devices," said Paul Reinhart, Executive Director of the SD Card Association, "and the SDA is working to help deliver on the entertainment and productivity-enhancing promise of such products. The new SDHC card specification will allow manufacturers to develop a new world of digital devices with the advanced features and functions consumers are clamoring for."

Today's digital devices require expanded memory capacities to accommodate large video, audio and database files.  The new specification will expand SD Memory Card capacities to meet the memory needs of these products, including those which use the memory-intensive FAT 32 file system. The new specification also guarantees a minimum SD Speed Class Rating, which for video products, is equivalent to MPEG-2 video.  Manufacturers can now design new high-speed SDHC Memory Cards products, confident their memory needs will be met by the new memory card.

The new SDHC Memory Card will also offer the expanded capacity needed to help deliver new applications made possible by three other SD specifications: SD-Audio, SD-Video and SD-Binding. SD-Audio will allow users to easily move music libraries between a variety of SD-enabled devices, to include cell phones, portable audio players, computers, car stereos and other mobile devices.  The SD-Audio specification provides content protection via CPRM which is built into each SD card, to prevent theft of data.

Similarly, the SD-Video specification allows consumers to capture video, even MPEG-2 quality, and move it to an SD-Video enabled product securely. SD-Video will soon allow users to record and watch h.264 digital TV programs from their SD-Video enabled cell phones.

And finally, the SD-Binding specification allows carriers/cell phone operators to provide security for content downloaded to their specific network mobile phones. The content is bound to the cell phone device and prevents unauthorized copying to other devices or computers.