Panasonic Unveils Blu-ray Recorder

Panasonic Unveils Blu-ray Recorder
Matsushita Electric Industrial will launch a Blu-ray Disc recorder compatible with new dual-layer discs and existing recordable DVD formats at the end of July, the company says.

The Panasonic DMR-E700BD can record 4.5 hours of digital satellite high-definition television when used with 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc Rewritable format discs, says Etsuji Shuda, director of Panasonic's AVC Networks home AV business unit, at a Tokyo news conference.

This extends to 6 hours for digital terrestrial HDTV and 9 hours for standard definition digital satellite TV. Analog television can be recorded for between 10.5 hours and 63 hours depending on the quality mode selected.

Single-layer Blu-ray Disc Rewritable discs with a capacity of 25GB are also supported and offer half the recording time, while DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs can be used to record analog television. Panasonic plans to launch both single-layer and dual-layer Blu-ray discs to coincide with the recorder's launch on July 31.

Blu-ray Disc is one of two formats emerging as a potential replacement for DVD-Video. Consumer electronics companies are looking at new formats because DVD's recording capacity, which is generally either 4.7GB or 9.4GB, is only enough to store around one hour of HDTV. The other format is called HD-DVD and has yet to be commercialized.