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May 26, 2012

Sony dropping DVD, adding Blu-Ray in Japanese PVRs

by Brad Linder, posted Sep 14th 2007 11:00AM

Blu-Ray recordersSony's convinced that Blu-Ray is the future. So much so that the company is dropping support for DVDs in all future personal video recorders it releases in Japan. The comapny also announced 4 new Blu-Ray recorders for the Japanese market, capable of recording up to 16 hours of high definition MPEG-4 video per 50GB disc.

While the earliest TiVo models were able to store fewer hours of programming, 16 hours doesn't really cut it these days, so of course, each of Sony's new machines also has a hard drive, ranging in size from 250GB to 500GB.

While dropping DVD recording support might seem like a big move, there's less competition for high-def optical disc recorders than standard def right now. And if Sony is seen as an innovator early on, they could establish their position as a market leader when the rest of the world realizes DVDs are about as cool as VHS tapes. Unless of course, the rest of the world prefers HD-DVD.

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EddieBrentwood

could sunder let us know what x and y is?

I have both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Both are very nice but I prefer Blu-ray. Blu-ray has more sophisticated menu features and as we all know more space.

When Star Wars HD comes out, I want all the extra features I can get and I think Blu-ray will do a better job of that.

September 19 2007 at 11:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ricky

DVD recorders were $1,000 in 1999.
Most DVD releases were$19-$25
I like Blu-Ray, so let's get the price of players/recorders/ and movies down in 2008 and let the next revolution continue for the average consumer.

September 17 2007 at 10:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sunder

Jimmy Skarkweather:

1. Even if BluRay -was- superior, so was betamax. So was Video8. So was Minidisc. So was Sony's special memory sticks. Getting the picture here?

2. All the evidence I've seen doesn't point to either being superior when it comes down to it. BluRay quotes that it has more of X and more of Y, but if X and Y don't matter to the audio/visual experience, isn't it just fluff? It's like a PC having an extra two keyboards, to maximise tactile input... sounds impressive to a layman until you realise that one keyboard is all that a human can use at one time (not counting the second keyboard I have plugged in as a PS2 redundancy in case the USB one decides not to work in the BIOS, that's a redundancy issue rather than secondary input :p)

You might not be a fanboy, Jimmy - you could just be poorly educated in the matter and blind to the facts, I suppose.

- Sunder

September 17 2007 at 5:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Owen Uridge

LOL at Jimmy Stark. Inferior, lol. The fanboys have arrived.

September 16 2007 at 6:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JimS

Err...yeah. Let's all support an inferior format (HD-DVD) that has less capacity and we will be forced to upgrade again sooner. We are so smart.

September 16 2007 at 1:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Owen Uridge

Sony supporting a format is reason enough for me to run and hide. Be right back, gotta dust off my mini-disk player........


September 14 2007 at 6:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Raj

betamax, lol

September 14 2007 at 11:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hollywood Ron

Let's hope the rest of the world favors HD-DVD.

September 14 2007 at 11:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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