Blu Ray recorder coming to US -- sort of...

JVC introduced at CEDIA Expo here Thursday a pair of the first Blu-ray Disc/hard disk recording decks for the U.S. market.

However, the manufacturer qualified the release by saying the products are targeted primarily at commercial applications and won't allow recording TV programming off-air or over cable and satellite systems, and will not permit duplicating copyrighted discs of any kind.

Originally Posted by Kelson

Could it be, that there is simply no market in the US for a home BD recorder -- or any removable media recorder for that matter. At least not in big enough numbers to interest the manufacturers. Witness the fold up of the DVD recorder market 2 years ago. Given the ready availability of all new TV series on DVD soon after the season ends, there are relatively few people that want to spend their own time to record, edit and burn endless disks of TV programs they'll never watch again. And those that do, don't want to pay more than $200-300 for a machine to do so -- the price bar set when the low-end suppliers entered the market.

Originally Posted by Kckay

The reason the major manufacturers will not produce STB Blu Ray recorders (to take the place of VCRs) for the USA market is because of the copy protection laws now in effect. It is not correct that the market for such equipment does not exist - as illustrated by the fact that this equipment is being sold all over the globe. Those US laws put the burden of eliminating illegally copied material on the manufacturers rather than on the law enforcement agencies. The laws hold the manufacturer liable for any illegal copies made on their equipment regardless of circumstance. Hence the manufacturers would need to place strong copy protection algorithms on all equipment sold here. And, since almost all of the major TV programs now being broadcast in HD are sent encoded, such equipment would be worthless for recording HD material.

So there are two major reasons IMO why Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and all the rest will not invest in such equipment for sale here. One, because it would not sell because it couldn't record much of anything except video from your private video camera, and two, because all of the manufacturers have made the determination that legal consequences arising from the new laws would cost them dearly as they defend themselves against law suits that would arise as illegal methods are found to bypass the copy protection schemes shipped with the equipment. The manufacturers feel they would be held liable even though they had nothing to do with it, and the legal expenses would be overwhelming.

In short IMO our government has once again legislated in favor of big business (in this case the arts and media producers). They have effectively stopped a major sector of the illegal material on the market, but in doing so, they have also eliminated freedom of choice for the consumer. For those that think BluRay equipment will show up at the CES show in a few months - don't hold your breath. Any equipment that does appear will be equipment with heavy usage restrictions like the new JVC recorders that can only record via firewire ports. As we speak every cable company in the USA has now or will soon disable the firewire ports on their STB's for the reason that there is still equipment in operation, like the old DVCR's that can copy HD material via their firewire ports. For the very same reason JVC (the major DVCR manufacturer) will NEVER sell that product or any similar product again.

In fact every avenue that allows for the coping of HD material is being shut down. As an example, one popular and still legitimate method to make copies of HD material today is via the Hauppauge HD-PVR device in conjunction with a top end computer. This method makes use of the analog hole. The analog hole is the HD component output signal. An analog signal cannot transfer the new digital copy protection encoding, hence any HD material through a component connection can be recorded. But guess what? There is a bill (I have been told) being prepared that will require all manufacturers of STB's and all cable companies that purchase them to turn off the component outputs, just as they are doing with their Fire wire ports and it will likely be put to a vote, and in effect in a few years - as soon as the old HD TV's that had only component inputs are phased out. Simply put. What few choices we have left in making HD copies are in process of being shut down. New methods are not coming available.

So for all of you that think the new equipment is about to hit the market? I don't think it will happen.