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Hitachi Shows High Capacity HD Video Recorder

Device features 1TB of space for storing high-definition programming.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Thursday, August 25, 2005

Hitachi has taken the wraps off four new digital video recorders
including one model that has 1TB of hard drive storage space.

That works out to be enough room for more than 2 months of continuous
television in the unit's lowest quality recording mode. So, why the
large capacity? The answer is high-definition (HD) television.
Compared to a conventional analog broadcast, an HD program requires
much more storage space so many current recorders have been able to
store only a handful of HDTV shows before the disk is full.

That's going to become more of a problem in Japan as the digital HDTV
rollout continues and more homes switch to the crisper and clearer
HDTV signal. In Tokyo that switch will gain momentum in October when
high-power terrestrial HDTV broadcasting begins. Low power broadcasts
have been available since late 2003 to homes in central Tokyo only.

In HDTV mode, the 1TB of recording space works out to a much more
sensible 68 hours to 128 hours, depending on the quality mode selected
and whether the signal comes from terrestrial transmitters or
satellite.

Providing the large capacity are two 500GB hard drives from Hitachi
Global Storage Technologies, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Hitachi.

Additional Features

Features of the DV-DH1000W include two tuners, so that two broadcasts
can be recorded simultaneously, and the recorder comes equipped with
an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), which is an emerging
standard developed for interconnection between high-definition capable
home electronics products.

The new recorder will be available from late October and Hitachi is
planning to produce around 5000 units per month. It will cost around
$2087.

The company also announced three other models, one each with recording
capacities of 500GB, 250GB, and 160GB. Those three models have broadly
similar features and will be available from late September, the
company says.

Consumers thinking about buying a product like Hitachi's new recorder
are currently in a difficult situation. At present no HD-compatible
optical disc system is available. That means that programs recorded in
HD have to stay on the hard drive, slowly eating into the available
recording space as time goes by and their number grows. Users could
copy them onto DVDs but they'd lose the high-quality.

Later this year, Toshiba plans to start selling a player based on the
HD-DVD standard, one of two new formats being pushed as a replacement
for DVDs for high-definition content, but the unit will only play
discs, not record onto them. Recorders are already available for
Blu-ray Disc, a rival format, however they're big, bulky and not
compatible with prerecorded HD movie discs that are due out next year
so represent a poor proposition to customers.

All-in-one hard drive recorders with the ability to move programs to
optical discs could be available sometime next year so consumers could
put off such purchases until then, or until a victor emerges in the
battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/articl [...] 05X,00.asp


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