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Video: First working Blu-ray Managed Copy demo
Just because Pioneer isn't in the plasma business anymore doesn't mean the company is dead, and one of the new points of focus over there is on media aggregation. So part of the new do-it-all Entertainment Tap concept Pioneer was displaying today included a demo of storing Managed Copies of Blu-ray Discs on a hard drive. The copy itself was done in about 4x real time (dependent on the drive's speed) and looked great thanks to some hardware transcoding. We also appreciated the Pioneer interface that made copying the disc easy. Of course at this point this is just a demo, with no word on availability or price, but it is a start to what will one day hopefully be a better way to enjoy HD movies.
Pioneer shoots for the moon with its Entertainment Tap concept
What do you get when you take every single source of audio and video content, including Blu-ray with Managed Copy, online streaming content and everything else you can think of (except Hulu), and then combine it with control and remote viewing capabilities? You guessed it, the Entertainment Tap. We understand that Pioneer is shooting for the stars with this one, but it most definitely falls under the category of it sounds too good to be true. Of course Pioneer is just trying to throw everything against the wall to see what sticks, which is great, but the anticipated release of 2010 seems ambitions considering everything included in the demo. We could go on and on listing the media sources and control devices, but Pioneer wasn't exactly giving us any negative responses. Lets just say the new ET concept is a do it all media server as well as a client client that plays nice with everything. For example, the ET can connect to a HR22 DirecTV HD DVR via USB and using the data from the DVR, it'll build its own version of the interface. Of course the whole video part is hard to integrate, so the ET simply instructs the TV to switch inputs at the right time to give you a seamless experience. At this point none of these features are finalized so don't be bashful with your ideas in the comments, because who knows, Pioneer might actually include them. %Gallery-72467%
