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DVD / Hard Drive Recorder With 28-Day Capacity

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-month-of-sundays dept.

fenimor writes "Panasonic today unveiled new DVD-recoders with astonishing 709 hours video recording capacity. The top model has onboard components of a good PC: 400GB hard drive, Ethernet port, broadband receiver, SD Memory Card slot, and a PCMCIA card. The DVD recorder is the fastest in the industry as it can record a one-hour program onto DVD-R disc in just 56 seconds. Internet access allows users to program recording through cell phones or PCs while away from home."

5 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Re:burnin' by Nos. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly... I think we're going to see some decrease in sales of DVD's as products like this start becoming popular (and cheaper). How long before the MPAA attacks these sort of devices (again) especially ones like this that will allow trading of content very easily.

  2. Cost inefficient? by scowling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OK. I have a computer with video in, a DVD+-R drive and 300 GB of hard drive space. Just about anybody upgrade their system with the same for about $400. Right? A little more if you want digital video in.

    And it's user-friendly. Got a remote control and everything.

    So how much is Panasonic's system, and how would it be better for me than what I've already got.

    --
    www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
  3. How can you WATCH that much TV?!? by the_skywise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've got a Tivo with 120 hours on it. I can't KEEP UP with it. Half the stuff "spills off" for having too many copies (I stick with the default 5 episodes max for most things) or the suggestions just time out.

    Granted, it's nice to be able to thumb through that much content when I don't feel like my normal stuff, but 700 hours worth!? (Yeah, there's always archival and keeping your DVD library on the hard drive is convenient but... c'mon... how hard is it to pull the DVD out of the case and put it into the drive?)

  4. Re:One hour in 56 seconds by jrumney · · Score: 5, Insightful
    seriously, doesn't 56 seconds seem like a typo?

    Not really. It does seem like the marketing version of the story though, as they are certainly talking about raw write time, not including compression time etc. My guess is the steps go like this:

    1. Capture one hour of TV.
    2. Possibly cheat by removing ad breaks, leaving around 40 minutes.
    3. Compress to MPEG4. Think VHS quality, not near-DVD.
    4. Defrag hard drive
    5. Start timer
    6. Write to DVD
    7. Stop timer: 56 seconds.
  5. Panasonic by payndz · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Panasonic's DVD recorders that I used in my (not long past) days as a tech reviewer, I rated pretty highly. Yes, they had their annoying quirks, but probably less than the equivalent Pioneer-clone units, and certainly a lot less than the Philips +RW machines. It comes down to format - Panasonic, IIRC, uses DVD-RAM, and as yet none of the three (three!) rival formats have yet established a convincing lead in the market.

    The big question is, can they still be snapped up before Broadcast Flag compatibility becomes mandatory?

    --
    You must think in Russian.