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Panasonic Combined DVD-R & PVR Device

Posted by Hemos on from the like-transformers dept.

Raetsel writes "Caught a commercial the other day hawking the device I've been waiting for. TIVO is a great idea, but what if you want to keep something more permanently? Enter the Panasonic DMR-series. The top-of-the-line DMR-HS2 ($1000 US) has a 40 GB hard drive, offers "Time Slip Playback" (TIVO's "pause live TV" function), and allows you to move shows off the hard drive onto DVD. Heck, you can even record straight to DVD-R or DVD-RAM discs (which is what the $700 DMR-E30(K/S) does). There's also a IEEE-1394 input, so you can record from sources that have a FireWire output. Oh, yeah... it's a progressive-scan DVD player, too."

2 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Formats by tmark · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So what formats will it recognize over Firewire ? I wonder whether a S-Video In would be more useful than firewire....does it have that ?

  2. Re:Yeah, that's great and all... by Jobe_br · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is the type of idea I had a while back, but the short answer, unfortunately, is no. At least, there's no way of building a hardware-based DVD player on the up-n-up (e.g. no DeCSS) w/o getting your own decryption key approved (that ought to set ya back a few).

    It'd be nice, though .. its gettin' to be more and more that the DIY type thing is out of the picture. And just think, we don't even have broadcast flags yet! Even so, I can't think of any way that I can build my own box that can play DVDs, have TiVO like functionality, tune both my regular cable channels as well as my digital cable channels - never mind if I had satellite, which I don't, and never mind premium cable channels or InDemand or PPV, which might require totally different chips on your tuner.

    Ah well, that's what we've got capitalism for, right? To see to our every need ... supply & demand, God bless.

    Cheers.