Mitsubishi's AVCREC Blu-ray recorders stuff HD content onto standard DVDs

Toshiba was first to score a high def recorder capable of stuffing HD content onto your choice of hard disk, blue-laser disc, or standard DVD. However, its HD Rec solution suffers from one little problem: the recently deceased HD DVD format. Now Mitsubishi steps into the void with a pair of 500GB DVR-BZ200 and 250GB DVR-BZ200 Blu-ray recorders. Both feature support for Blu-ray's AVCREC specification allowing them to record about 2 hours of Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) content in MPEG4 AVC/H.264 format direct to standard 4.7GB DVDs. That's about 8 hours to a single-sided Blu-ray disc. Now the catch, the standard is limited to ISDB broadcasts making this a Japan-only solution for the time being. Nevertheless, we expect to see more AVCREC capable devices including camcorders and PC optical drives as the standard prepares for take off. Damn you ATSC!

[Via Akihabara News and Impress]

[trancer @ Mar 18th 2008 5:59AM]

those are some sexy machines. just look at that remote.

[Daza @ Mar 18th 2008 6:16AM]

Hopefully other manufacturers will adopt such ideas and bring out DVB solutions too. I can really see devices like these replacing a lot of other boxes in the cabinets, no need for a separate Blu-ray player and a separate recording solution.

[Enoshima @ Mar 18th 2008 8:20AM]

Well, Sony and Panasonic have both had Blu-ray recorders out for almost six months that can do real-time transcoding to H.264 and burn the result to either Blu-ray or DVD, so this isn't new. It does work great, though with BD-R prices dropping by the day, the reason to burn to DVD is diminishing. At the moment here in Japan, one 25 Gb BD-R is roughly $6, twice the price of a CPRM-enabled DVD-R DL at $3. For the storage you get, BD-R is already the winner.
Of course, a standard 4.7 Gb DVD-R (CPRM) comes in at 60 cents, so that still wins, but squeezing a full-length movie down that much doesn't do it for me.

[Mr. Fusion @ Mar 18th 2008 7:48AM]

No NTSC? Man, and the whole time I'm reading the article I'm thinking:

Yeah? YEAH?

[pause]

Awwwww...

[Mr. Fusion @ Mar 25th 2008 12:05AM]

My apologies, meant to say ATSC. So much for that quip.

[NLI @ Mar 18th 2008 8:42AM]

aha! one step in the right direction. Now when it becomes easy to rip these new discs to .iso files, the HD discs will be suitable replacement for DVDs.

[JohnTitor @ Mar 18th 2008 8:57AM]

just goes to show how little Blu-Ray has gone from good old DVD despite the high price
heck, I think we should go back to Digital VHS, ever seen the full 1080P quality on those things 8-O

[orielsy @ Apr 10th 2008 11:21AM]

I don't get it.

Does this mean you can burn two hours worth of HD content on a normal DVD and still maintain the high definition quality image.?

Somebody please rescue me.

[Peter B @ Mar 18th 2008 11:55AM]

Go search for Xbox 360 or PS3 compatable HD rips. Most of these will fit on a Single or Dual layer DVD-R and look terrific. You wont get lossless audio on these, but 5.1 is usually standard.

VC-1 and H.264 are very efficent codecs.

[JohnTitor @ Mar 18th 2008 12:10PM]

think of it as burning a HD DivX file on a Data DVD, won't play on a regular DVD player but it's still there in full glory

[orielsy @ Mar 18th 2008 1:27PM]

holy crap !!!!

[John McDole @ Mar 18th 2008 12:20PM]

Don't forget Brazil with its slightly different standard.

[penguendedektif @ Mar 18th 2008 1:39PM]

But a 2-hour 1080p rip on a DVD5, even with H.264 codec, doesn't seem logical to me. I mean you can do it, but quite possibly they will look like crap. I've seen some 1080p DVD9 rips, even they looked very dvd-ish. Downscaling a 1080p broadcast to 720p and recording it to a DVD5 via H.264 is much more sensible in my opinion.

[Adam Zey @ Mar 18th 2008 3:25PM]

2 hours of 1080p on a DVD5 (single-layer DVD) is pushing it. 2 hours of 720p on a DVD5 or 2 hours of 1080p on a DVD9 (dual-layer DVD), sure...

I'm convinced that 1080p on a DVD5 will look worse (due to insufficient bitrate) than 720p on the same disc. Yes, the resolution is lower, but you can better preserve detail.

[Allen @ Mar 18th 2008 6:28PM]

Wait wait, whoa, your telling me it was possible all this time to fit 1080p content on a DVD9 when I've been wolfing down BD discs believing they are all thats capable?

What gives? Why did we need Blu-Ray if DVD can do it all by itself? Adam Zey mentioned bitrate, how does that work?

[penguendedektif @ Mar 18th 2008 10:40PM]

Well, think it's like DVD and divx, or AudioCD and mp3. For an untrained eye (or ear for that matter) a nicely compressed video with a proper codec seems very similar to the uncompressed source. H.264 is an amazing codec and it can compress HD videos very nicely. With a moderate computer (a dual core with a couple of rams and a decent video card)or an XBOX360 you can watch these videos seamlessly. For 720p, a single DVD5 is enough. For 1080p however; even a single DVD9 is not enough, since it's almost three times bigger than 720p in total pixels. As Adam sad, higher bitrate + lower resolution seems much nicer than lower bitrate + higher resolution. So if you are recording a broadcast, I suggest you downsample it to 720p, use a high bitrate and record it to a cheaper-than-water DVD5...