Toshiba Announces Standalone HD-DVD Recorder (RD-A1)
By Chris Boylan
Toshiba's RD-A1 HD-DVD recorder is expected to be available in Japan in July, 2006.
According to a recent article in the L.A. Times, Toshiba is planning to release a standalone HD-DVD recorder in the Japanese market as early as next month. Apparently Toshiba is serious about this HD-DVD format, and is hoping to gain market share quickly while the Blu-ray camp is still playing catch-up.
The first Blu-ray Disc player, Samsung's BD-P1000, hit stores this week, while Pioneer and Sony have delayed the release of their own players until later this Summer. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc represent a giant leap in quality over standard DVD, with support for full High Definition 1920X1080 resolution video (1080p or 1080i) and up to 8 channels of uncompressed digital audio.
Toshiba's new HD-DVD recorder, the RD-A1, will combine an HD-DVD burner with a 1TB (yes, that's one terabyte) hard drive, which can store up to 130 hours of high-definition broadcasts at a data rate of 17 MBPS or 92 hours at 24 MBPS. If you want to record in "near DVD quality" standard definition mode, then you can fit up to a whopping 1788 hours of content on the internal hard drive.
Toshiba's RD-A1 HD-DVD recorder includes a one terabyte hard drive.
No matter how you count it, this capacity will allow you to build up quite a collection of High Definition TV shows, and when you decide you want to archive your recordings, you can dub them onto a blank HD-DVD for long-term storage.
As for recording capacity on a blank HD-DVD, that is said to be 115 minutes of HD video on a single-layer 15GB disc and 230 minutes on a dual-layer 30 GB disc, at a data rate of 17Mbps.
Interestingly enough, although pre-recorded HD-DVD titles have used the MPEG4 codec for highest efficiency, the RD-A1 states that it will record video in MPEG2-TS and MPEG2 formats. Audio recording options include AAC, Dolby Digital and linear PCM. Audio playback supports everything in the HD-DVD spec including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.
HD-RA1 - rear view.
HD-DVD players (notably, Toshiba's HD-XA1 and HD-A1) have been available in Japan since March, and in the U.S. since late April, but the RD-A1 will be the first model that can record on blank HD-DVD discs.
The recorder is scheduled to hit stores in Japan on July 14, 2006 and will carry a suggested retail price of 398,000 yen (approximately $3,470 US). There are no formal plans yet for a U.S. introduction.
Inputs and outputs of the RD-A1.
I think the price tag will need to come down a bit (let's say, by a factor of 10?) before it will have any real impact on consumer sales. But having the ability to archive HD programming to a long-term storage format is a key advantage currently in HD-DVD's favor.
