At least the prices and this site are in Britain. And it records to a regular DVD disc in AVCHD (mpeg 4 /H.264) albeit probably about two hours on a DVD-R dual layer at a bit rate considered very close to HD quality. I have done some AVCHD recordings on a DVD-R disc on the computer lately using the new Hauppage DVR. It is so much better than SD xp record that we are use to- but editing is a pain. I bet these Pannys are much easier. Now if we can just get Panny to intro here.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=23866

:eek:

In US$:
320GB = $1580
500GB = $1931
1TB = $2985

:eek:

I find it absolutely astonishing that Panasonic firmly believes there is a thriving market for $1800-2600 video recorders in the UK and Australia but none whatsoever in North America. Either Europeans and Australians earn a helluva lot more money (more than just the Euro vs dollar thing), or North Americans are completely disinterested in permanent recordings.

The MP4 format is indeed the bitch of death to edit. If Panasonic has figured out a way to make this easier internally within its new recorders, they could totally re-launch MP4. Everywhere but here, that is:(.

Well, I, for one, have a hard time imagining anyone being willing to pay that much for a blu-ray recorder. I certainly have no interest in it. But then I have little interest in Blu-ray period. ;)

The question is, what is there out there that would justify spending so much money to record it in the Blu-ray format? Recording a broadcast from Time-Warner cable, which in NYC send such a compressed signal that I often see macroblocking on black fadeouts on TCM black and white movies? Maybe recording regular broadcasts, so the rating box that pops up for a few seconds after commercial breaks on many cable broadcasts is super clear. There is really not that much out there where you need to spend so much money to get that extra increment of image detail and quality that Blu-ray represents.

For DVDR recording, the LP quality on my Panasonic DVD HDD recorder is good enough for me, combined with the 35 cents each cost of TY DVD-Rs when I permanently store stuff on DVDR. When I want to fill the DVD-R with a one hour program, I use the XP speed.

Good to see you back, Houston Guy.

Might be more useful for OTA then, presuming there'd be anything they'd leave unprotected that would be worth recording - but the way they're adding subchannels like crazy, OTA's going to be as bad or worse than cable or satellite pretty soon. We're not very far off from that in this market already. NBC is already that bad, and so is probably CW.

Even still, somebody would have to be nuts to pay that much money just to record from OTA. The big shows will all be CP'd to death (the recorder will probably down-rez them, which is what the $3000.00 US Sony VAIO Blu-ray system does now), and you might as well just buy the DVD's for those prices.

Asia, Europe, even Australia, but not here? Another sad reminder of the end of the American Century.

Asia, Europe, even Australia, but not here? Another sad reminder of the end of the American Century.

I think it may be the film industry that doesn't want them here. I wouldn't pay that price but a film pirate would.

Well, I, for one, have a hard time imagining anyone being willing to pay that much for a blu-ray recorder. I certainly have no interest in it. But then I have little interest in Blu-ray period. ;)Let's not forget the cost of media. It has come down quite a bit but is still expensive. I see Verbatim BD-R going for $13 each. At that price, can you imagine how you would feel when you generate a coaster?

Another sad reminder of the end of the American Century.Or perhaps the rise of the astute American consumer?

- glass half full vs. half empty -

Recording a broadcast from Time-Warner cable, which in NYC send such a compressed signal that I often see macroblocking on black fadeouts on TCM black and white movies?

Comcast Cable in Portland Oregon has the same situation for TCM black and white movies.

I'm going this route - the Hauppauge 1212. It is a external USB capture device. It has component inputs and can capture in 1080i or 720p as well as standard definition resolutions. There is also a beta driver available that enables 5.1 audio capture.

It captures in the AVCHD format. The files can be burned to a regular DVD and played back on Blu-ray players. Using a dual layer blank DVD should allow for almost 3 hours of HD content. Compressed sure but with a 1080i or 720p resolution. A single layer DVD should hold 1 to 1.5 hours of decent HD content.

I'm going to capture to my notebook PC. Burn the content to DVD and be done with it. The Popcorn Hour media server which can handle H.264 files may also be an option for playback.

Sells for a little over $200. It should arrive tomorrow. If it does not perform as it should then back it goes.

Here: Hauppauge HD PVR (http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html)

I think it's at least a positive sign that Panasonic is manufacturing DVDRs for some market rather than withdrawing worldwide. There may be an exteremely small ray of hope here.

Yeah, Jim. We are like prisoners in a cage, dying of dehydration, and a spring of water has appeared, just on th other side of the bars, out of reach. In some ways, the situation is worse now than before. We now KNOW that a product COULD be available... but it isn't! We COULD have such a recorder... but we can't! A ray of sunlight, but not even a promise of a product... yet!

The Panasonic recorders for Freesat (the non-subscription satellite TV service) have started being reviewed in the UK. The UK versions have two DVB-S/S2 satellite tuners.

They are expensive - but then so were the first DVD Recorders when they launched.

In some countries they are being sold with DVB-T terrestrial tuners (like France or Australia where HD broadcasts are OTA), but in the UK they have DVB-S/S2 tuners (as we don't currently have OTA HD until DVB-T2 launches later this year).

They support Freesat+, which is the 8 day OTA EPG with broadcaster controlled recording start/stop triggers (so you don't have to pad live events, the broadcaster will signal late starts or over-running events), and like most HD PVRs they record the off-air video stream bit perfect to the hard drive, for lossles replay (with secondary audio and subtitles recorded alongside the main video and audio). However the signal is transcoded when it is copied to BD - so you can chose the recording quality/recording time. This transcoding is a real-time process. It can also be applied to hard disc recordings, to reduce their size, again in real-time.

In the UK it is getting quite confusing when it comes to recording content though. All the Freesat broadcasts are un-encrypted. If you have a DVB-S/S2 tuner card for your PC you can record, replay and do what you like with the streams. HOWEVER the BBC and ITV are flagging their Freesat HD streams with copy-protection flags (though the content is unencrypted). The BBC are flagging their content with a "Copy Once" flag - which means you can time-shift to Hard Disc, but only make a single copy to Blu-ray. ITV are currently flagging their content (probably unintentionally - but who knows) as "Copy Never" so you can record to Hard Disc, but can't copy to Blu-ray...

Unlike the US - many European countries are using satellite transmission to broadcast subscription-free versions of their OTA stations (mainly because we don't have the local affiliate model so have fewer regional variants) so that viewers who don't get reliable OTA reception can receive the same services with a dish. However some countries are broadcasting these services encrypted (requiring a decryption module and viewing card provided either free or for a one-off fee) to restrict viewing to (for rights reasons) whilst others are broadcasting them un-encrypted (like the UK) - with rights holders kept happy by the use of narrow beam transponders. There is also variations in whether these encrypted or un-encrypted broadcasts have copy protection flags on them... (So you can have encrypted broadcasts with no copy protection flags as well as unencrypted broadcasts WITH copy protection... Very confusing...)

... Very confusing...)

But nicely explained, thanks:)
IMO we'll never get the recorder you described here in the US. For the most part DVDRs with a HDD never made it mainstream, let alone what you described:(
Like the foreign cars that never make it stateside, they're nice to look at anyway;)
With the digital transition we finally had a chance to standardize systems between countries, why oh why did we have to go with a system different the rest of the free world :mad:
Ya I know, copyright holders wanting to restrict content:(

With the digital transition we finally had a chance to standardize systems between countries, why oh why did we have to go with a system different the rest of the free world :mad:
Ya I know, copyright holders wanting to restrict content:(

Not quite;). This whole American DTV debacle began so long ago, I still owned a video hardware/software store. At the time, we retailers were blitzed with breathless near-daily trade reports about new developments in the DTV saga. It was an absolute freaking circus, with no basis in reality: millions and millions of dollars pissed away on schemes everyone knew wouldn't work, years and years of inane corporate jockeying that makes the Sony/Toshiba HD-DVD war look trite by comparison. There are only two reasons North America diverged from the existing global DTV standard:

1. Technically, we really did initially think we could do better, there are flaws in the global system that impact reception severely. North America has many many more private broadcasters, a much wider selection of stations, and we're absolutely batsh*t over TV: an addiction level not quite matched in other countries. There was genuine concern that the system adopted by the rest of the world would prove completely unacceptable to American consumers (little did we realize that NO form of DTV would ever approach the usability of analog- in hindsight, we really shouldn't have bothered).

2. The genuine pursuit of technical improvement was a factor but insignificant compared to the completely insane mythology that sprung up around the possibility that some USA company might finally get back into TV manufacturing or licensing a superior system to other countries if only we could come up with a superior home grown system. The fact that digital broadcasting is an inherently buggy technology thats useless even in completely flat terrain seems to have been ignored in favor of misguided fantasies that American firms might once again achieve TV technology dominance if only. That was a huge "if", it cost us billions of dollars, years of wasted time, and the undying hatred of the consumer electronics mfrs in Asia who inevitably would still be making our televisions regardless (except now we cheated them from reaping the promised reward of universal tuners providing unprecedented economies of scale). Ironically one of the biggest thorns blocking adoption of the existing global DTV system was the bedraggled remnants of the old Zenith Corporation: we should all get to try the drugs they were on when they convinced the feds an America-exclusive DTV system would put Zenith back on the map:rolleyes:. That would be the equivalent today of Chrysler claiming they could take down Toyota, "if only you'll fund us to try".

They all should have stayed in bed.:mad: