The fight for the title of biggest hard drive hotted up today as Hitachi announced its 400GB contender. The Deskstar 7k400, a 7,200rpm, 3.5in drive, is aimed at the audio-visual market, where capacity and low cost per GB are the main reasons to buy.

Hitachi says the new drive can hold 400 hours of standard TV programming, 45 hours of HDTV programming or more than 6,500 hours of high quality digital music. It features a new industry-standard AV feature, known as Streaming Command Set. This optimizes the drives for storing and retrieving content on a digital video recorder (DVR).

The DVR market is set to explode in the next few years, according to the Yankee Group. The research firm forecasts that DVRs will be found in 24.7 million homes by the year 2007. High definition TV will also drive demand.

The Deskstar 7k400 is shipping now, in limited quanities. More info here. ®