HDD Recorder with Blue Ray disc Recorder/Player

[doverrog]

I currently have a Sony HDD recorder with a dvd disc recorder/player in one unit. the RDR HXD 710.

Although it's reasonable it has it's faults such as periodice freezing and locking up.

I'm thinking of moving on to a similar machine but with Blue Ray as the disc player/recorder.

It seems Panasonic is the only manufacturer to have one available.

Do Sony have plans for one and if so when and at what sort of price?

[rooobb]

As far as I know, Sony build such machines only for the Japanese market. In europe, mainly in UK and France, I've seen only Panasonic sells this BD recorder (BW780/880). They claim a lot of features (twin freeview HD tuner, guideplus, SD and USB support, internet streaming, BD live, etc.) but reviews are sometimes not that good and for sure price are very high. It seems they do not support UHF channels that is a problem for Italy but I understood not for UK.

Few other manufactures (i.e. LG) sell DVD recorder with BD player functionalities (but not BD recording).

Sony was expected to introduce something in the European market this year, but till now non news....

[doverrog]

Thanks rooobb , that's helpful and interesting.

As a pioneer of Blue Ray I wonder why Sony is being so slow to provide machines.

Could it be because of the worry of copying DVD content which they own? The same argument was used when the first dvd machines came out and now they're commonplace.

I wonder if perhaps blu-ray has failed to make as much impression as was hoped and it's not until High Defintion TV and perhaps 3D tv is more commonplace that the market will move to blu-ray.

For the majority of people it seems the existing dvd quality is good enough though.

[rooobb]

I agree with you regarding BD qulity perception from "standard user", me too I don't feel the need. What surprise me is that it seems that manufacturer seems to have lost interest in recording machine at all: dvd recorder in the market are now quite old (SONY itself is selling the DC series that has quite nothing better that the old HXD)  and you cannot find some features (like HD tuner) for which the difference in quality is quite visible. They seems more interested in adding some recording functionalities in the TV sets, that I agree could be nice, but I think the use of a DVD/BD recorder has a different target (i have built out of it my own collection of cartoons for my daughters over the years)

[Catmambo · Accepted solution]

No conspiracy here guys -

Simply the cost of these devices is very high. Thus I think only Panasonic have made them for the UK to date and these are super expensive and they don't really sell very well as far as I'm aware. So the level of consumer demand just isn't there to justify the amount of work needed to customise and retail such a device in the uk.

With Freeview HD its easier to simply  record this to hard disk so we have built and sell a Freeview HD PVR  - even at retail prices you can buy a 1TB drive for £30-£40 now I guess. Similar cost of blank Blu-ray discs would cost a lot more..

There are some other PVR's that allow you to copy recorded content off the internal hard drive to USB stick as well I think.

cheers

[doverrog]

Hi -

Any comment on these machines coming to the UK?

Sony Japan has released information on five new DLNA Blu-ray recorders with digital TV tuner and DVR functionality, which allow you to record your favorite programs in HD (if possible). The one HDMI (1080 24p) and other output-equipped BDZ-RX100 (1TB, Y180,000), BDZ-RX50 (500GB, Y150,000), BDZ-RX30 (320GB, Y120,000), and BDZ-RS10 (320GB, Y100,000) will all arrive this September, while the monstrous 2TB BDZ-EX200 (Y280,000) with two HDMI (1080 60p/24p) and other outputs will show up in retail stores in early November. Did we mention you can record two programs at the same time with most models?

These recorders are also boasting updated CREAS 2 technology, which is the successor to the original CREAS (“Creativity Reality Empowering Architecture by Sony”) that basically improves SD and HD video quality through upscaling (e.g. converting 8-bit/10-bit to 14-bit), even from Blu-ray discs. This CREAS 2 integration allows users to choose what type of television they have and the setting, such as: LCD TV in a bright room, LCD TV in a dark room, OLED, Plasma, Projector, and so forth. CREAS 2 also boasts: better smoothing, noise elimination in animated films, enhanced color interpolation in compressed video, and enhanced black colors (“Clear Black”), which allows users to fine-tune the depth of black in the video.

This looks like just the machines we would expect from Sony and long overdue with Freeview HD rolling out.:smileywink:

I'm keeping my fingers crossed - let's also have competitive pricing please.

[Jonnie1266]

Well it's been a few years since this thread was started

Still nothing on the home front here in the West - Panasonic are still thriving with their product, in fact in the time that this thread was started Panasonic have upgraded several Blu-ray recorder models to the latest available model here:  At only £450 if you do your shopping wisely

Samsung have Blu-ray players with HDD built in acting like the old PVR's - they are not able to record to disc however.

So, does anyone know if we are ever going to see any Sony Blu-ray recorder models available in the UK ?

An interesting article here: regarding the new Ultra HD Blu-ray specification - perhaps Sony are waiting to bundle their recorders together with 4K capability ??

[jomcewe31]

Be very careful about buying the Panasonic Blu-ray recorder - it only works with expensive Panasonic discs.

[Jonnie1266]

Hi jomcewe31,

I have a Panasonic Blu-ray Recorder, I have only used Sony and Verbatim discs and have had no problems when burning or playing back. Where did you get this information ?

Regards

[jomcewe31]

I have a new Panasonic DMR-BWT850 and that IS the situation - every make of BD-R disc other than Panasonic has resulted in the error condition "This disc is incompatible". I am in discussion with Panasonic about it. A colleague has a slightly older version of this Panasonic recorder and he reports the same situation.