Blue laser shortage or not, Sony's hoping to
avoid the delay bug with its first
Blu-ray disc recorders, just announced at CEATEC 2006 for early December release in Japan. Both models will record two TV programs at once via their two digital and one analog tuners. Backing up video to Blu-ray discs is limited to 25GB -- no 50GB BD-R/BD-RE writing or reading here -- but it will play cartridges from the old Blu-ray recorders, as well as the new
AVCHD discs. With the right NTT cellphone you can schedule recordings from anywhere, but at home owners will enjoy the slick
PSP-style XMB crossbar menu like other
Sony products. The high-end BDZ-V9 is the only choice if you must have 1080p output, DLNA streaming to connected PCs or compatible displays and video conversion to MPEG-4 to transfer directly to a PSP. All the connections you'd expect are a go, including HDMI out, plus i.Link and USB inputs to hook up digicams and make as many sentimental James Blunt-soundtracked slideshows as you can with the included x-Pict Story HD software. The BDZ-V9 will set buyers back a cool ¥300,000 ($2,543 US) or so on December 8th, with the value-priced BDZ-V7 only expected to go for ¥250,000 ($2,119 US) when it hits on December 19th. They may not have the
4x Blu-ray recording of Panasonic's lineup or the soul-crushing bulk of
Toshiba's 1TB RD-A1, but with a simple menu system and joystick based remote control Japanese gamers who didn't get one of the 100,000 launch PS3s will still bring Blu-ray to their living room this year.
[Via
Impress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dario @ Oct 3rd 2006 2:33AM
4x Recording!!? haha man, in a couple or years there will be like 8x or 16x recording, then i'll buy one
Eugene @ Oct 3rd 2006 3:33AM
hmm... and on that James Blunt note, I think I'll pass....
Dave @ Oct 3rd 2006 5:37AM
Great player. Excelent design. Unseen futures and quality.
Tony @ Oct 17th 2006 12:47AM
How can buy one of these BD recorders here is US? All the ones I've seen are in Japan. Only the players are offered here in US. Why?
If anyone knows how to by a recorder here now, please let me know.
McHoffa @ Oct 3rd 2006 9:23AM
Ok, maybe it's just me, but when you have a highly anticipated game system like the ps3 coming out, and there is a shortage of blue lasers causing the launch numbers to be drastically lower than anticipated, why would you put part of your supply of blue lasers into something like this that is not very highly anticipated at all? I would think from a business standpoint they would rather get more ps3's into households for the holiday season to win the blu-ray/hddvd war... I personally think they should do everything they can to get more ps3's on the shelves before the holidays, or they are going to have a tougher time getting people to buy into the blu-ray format or the ps3 itself...
Shmoe @ Oct 3rd 2006 9:37AM
Got Root? Everyone's gonna want a Beta-Ray burner at that price.
jsjeetley @ Oct 3rd 2006 12:30PM
Futuristic design as with most of the blu-ray players coming out, little on the large side but so far a lot have been bulky and not as inconspicuos as your conventional dvd players. The picture quality will hopefully make up for this.
http://www.blu-raychoice.com
c.Lake @ Oct 3rd 2006 2:45PM
It looks great, but I'm not getting stuck with the next BETA-MAX. And why didn't they start with Mpeg4 to begin with...
Just so I could waste time converting video so it will fit on my PSP/iPOD/Cell. That seems kind of pointless. Does that sound like next-gen to you?