James Delahunty
13 Sep 2007 9:46
Sony Corp. has made another move to display its strong support for the Blu-ray Disc format, by dumping the DVD format for use in its digital video recorders in Japan. The announcement was made by the company at the same time it unveiled four Blu-ray video recorders. The new recorders offered support for dual-layer discs which was missing from earlier models, and also offer some more attractive features.
The new models can transcode into the more efficient H.264 / AVC video format, significantly improving the quality and amount of space needed for video content. Sony would advertise its 50GB dual layer Blu-ray discs as being capable of recording 4 hours of high definition content in MPEG-2 format, but that could be increased up to 16 hours with AVC.
The BDZ-X90 model is the most powerful of the new models, supporting output of 1080p Full HD content, designed for use with a home theater system. It also sports an internal 500GB hard disk drive, supports Deep Color and HDMI 1.3. The BDZ-L70 is made specifically for users with camcorders, supporting one touch transfer of video from Handycam models to its internal 250GB HDD.
The BDZ-T50 and T70 drop the extra special features and are aimed at those who just want to record from TV signals. The sport 320GB and 250GB HDDs respectively. All models support 4x Blu-ray recording, lossless audio output via HDMI and AVCHD compatibility. While it would seem that Sony is gambling a lot on the move away from DVD, it's not as crazy as it may initially seem.
It is very difficult for a company to make any money in the market for DVD recorders, due to increasing competition. A switch to Blu-ray puts Sony in a less competitive area and even just the capacity differences to the DVD format itself is a good selling point if consumers or prosumers are interest in paying the high prices for the models.
The BDZ-X90 will cost a staggering ¥200,000, the BDZ-L70 will go for ¥180,000, the BDZ-T50 will go for ¥140,000 and BDZ-T70 will go for ¥160,000. They will be available in Japan from November 8th.
Source:
Yahoo (PC World)