Big Picture Big Sound

While Blu-ray Disc continues to make in-roads in the US due to its improved picture and sound quality over DVD as well as unique new features such as Bonus View and BD-Live, one thing holding some back from adoption of the technology is its lack of convenient recordability. If you want to record onto a Blu-ray Disc in the US, your only option is to buy a Blu-ray R/W drive for your PC as well as the software to edit and master your high definition recordings onto Blu-ray Disc. Looking around the various vendor booths at CEATEC in Japan last week presented a vastly different picture.

Blu-ray Recorders from a number of manufacturers including Sharp and Panasonic are available now or soon will be, starting at a street price of around 80,000 Yen ($800 US) and going up well over 200,000 Yen ($2,000). And, unlike most of the DVD recorders currently available in the US, Japanese Blu-ray Recorders all include built-in hard disk drives (HDDs) so you can edit your programs to remove commercials, do basic editing or clean up beginnings and endings before finalizing your recording onto Blu-ray Disc. Models from Panasonic and Sharp vary in their on-board storage space from 250 GB all the way up to 1 Terabyte.

In what seems like a throw back to old-fashioned days of yore, select models from each company also include a VHS video tape player/recorder. Hmmm, haven't you always wanted an upconverting VHS deck? Or maybe you still have a library of tapes you want to archive to Blu-ray Disc?  No, well there are a wealth of options to choose from with just the Blu-ray deck, on-board hard drive and tuner, and many players offer advanced features such as online access to the AcTVila portal and Tsutaya HD movie download service (both indigenous to Japan as well).  Unfortunately Japanese models use a digital tuner that is incompatible with the US system, so even if you wanted to import one yourself, you're not going to get full functionality.

As for when models will be available for the North American market, company reps from Panasonic and Sharp were unable to commit to a specific date. They variously state a few reasons for the delay:

• Pressure from movie studios/content providers to prevent copying or archiving of copyright content (so much for "fair use").
• Cultural differences between the US and Japan - Japanese consumers are more likely to watch and keep their favorite programs while US consumers are more likely to DVR and delete them.
• Uncertainty as to the format's success in North America - this one is kind of a chicken/egg scenario for me - without recording capability, the adoption may be slowed, but if the adoption is slowed then recorders will be delayed.

We'll have to see at CES whether any manufacturer takes a bold move in the direction of Blu-ray recorders but for now, we'll simply have to envy the Japanese and their breadth of choices.