Do you see a Blu-ray DVD recorder in the market?

[coody]

Do you see a Blu-ray DVD recorder or computer with a Blu-ray DVD burner in the market?

[edDV]

In Japan the Blu-Ray recorders sell for about $2000.

You can add a Blu-Ray burner to any PC. I havn't seen any laptop burners, only players.

[jman98]

I don't see any future in North America for BluRay recorders. Why? We barely have any DVD recorders available here. The fact is that the vast majority of people in the USA (and I guess in Canada too) have no interest in archiving, so DVR solutions are fine for them. Europe might be interested in BluRay recorders, but not at the equivalent of $2000 US.

[usually_quiet]

I saw this in a VideoHelp thread started by lordsmurf a few days ago. There are two BD recorder models from JVC already here, but they are not for recording HDTV, since they don't have a tuner or component-in. These seem like they are mainly intended for people who want to edit, author, and make copies of recordings from their HD camcorder. They aren't cheap, but may be the right product for some consumers or professionals.

http://www.amazon.com/JVC-SR-HD1250US-Blu-Ray-Disc-Recorder/dp/B0030DH1I8/ref=sr_1_4?i...2666467&sr=8-4
http://www.jr.com/jvc/pe/JVC_SRHD1500US/

[ddawson24]

I think when people back stuff up they prefer hard drive type solutions now. If someone buys a DVD or BluRay they want to turn it into something they can use on their portable media devices too. Those solutions seem like they will be the most popular in my opinion. A BluRay burner for a computer is fairly inexpensive and with a little software people can do whatever they want from there. For a stand alone product it would need to have a hard drive and be able to back up to different devices in order to be something more than a niche product.

[oldfart13]

The producers would balk at being able to make direct 1 to 1 digital High Def recordings of programs. No devices are being sold that would allow for such a thing, say from satellite or cable. Can off air High Def cards for computers be used? I don't have access to such devices nor do I have access to any stations broadcasting OTA programs that way so I can't answer that question. No future over here for standalones I'm afraid...

[usually_quiet]

In Japan the Blu-Ray recorders sell for about $2000.

You can add a Blu-Ray burner to any PC. I havn't seen any laptop burners, only players.

Out of curiosity, I visited Newegg to see what BD burners were selling for these days and they were selling a BD burner for for laptops. So things are changing...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118037

[handyguy]

In Japan the Blu-Ray recorders sell for about $2000.

You can add a Blu-Ray burner to any PC. I havn't seen any laptop burners, only players.

Out of curiosity, I visited Newegg to see what BD burners were selling for these days and they were selling a BD burner for for laptops. So things are changing...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118037

Perhaps you could get one of those then add some PVR program & inform it to use your BR for recording?

[edDV]

In Japan the Blu-Ray recorders sell for about $2000.

You can add a Blu-Ray burner to any PC. I havn't seen any laptop burners, only players.

Out of curiosity, I visited Newegg to see what BD burners were selling for these days and they were selling a BD burner for for laptops. So things are changing...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118037

Perhaps you could get one of those then add some PVR program & inform it to use your BR for recording?

Most would capture to hard drive first, then edit, then burn a Blu-Ray for selected material.

[handyguy]

BR blanks are too expensive.

[lordsmurf]

Anybody wanting a Blu-ray recorder should get this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0034J44DI?ie=UTF8&tag=thdifa-20&linkCode=as2&camp=17...SIN=B0034J44DI
It's JVC, and it's probably all we'll ever see. The specs are nice!

For me, from a professional stance, there is zero demand. None. So I don't have current plans to buy one.

Any and all HD materials tend to go straight to streaming online services or broadcasts, never once touching disc. The disc versions are always downscaled DVDs, because that's where market saturation is, and it's a great low-cost option for distribution. Anybody wanting the HD version can simply watch it on TV or online. This attitude carries over from VHS days -- if you want the "good version" then watch TV or go to theatre. If you just want a home version, then a VHS tape will suffice for you. Content owners never were, and still are not, entirely thrilled about home users have a near-perfect quality copy of their own masters.

The only people giddy about Blu-ray are the upper-end hobbyists that shared the same curiosity for VCD, Laserdiscs, Divx, etc. In other words, not anybody that really matters. Indeed, people are far more interested in converting videos to Youtube or their new iPhone/Droid/iPad devices. Even though quality is vastly inferior to DVDs, that's where their interest lies. Our generation grew up on VHS tapes, so that's always a baseline quality measure. Beyond all this, most of us (business or personal) can't really afford adding Blu-ray stuff during a recession. And seeing how we get along fine without it, that idea will stick long-term and kill the format.

Remember that Blu-ray was the answer to a question nobody asked. (Excluding MPAA and manufacturers, who asked "How can we make more profit?") For years the shift has been towards portability, convertibility -- not adding several dozen more lines of resolution and calling it a day. And those are the still-unanswered questions that are actually being asked.

And that's really that.

[[_chef_]]

Panasonic has one out even here in europe, even with DVB-S/DVB-S2 tuner inside................

Available with 1 or 2 tuners.
german: http://www.hifi-regler.de/testberichte/panasonic/panasonic-dmr-bs850.php

http://www.areadvd.de/hardware/2010/panasonic_bs_885.shtml



BTW, this thread doesnt belong here but into STANDALONES/recorders.

[Seeker47]

2013Anybody wanting a Blu-ray recorder should get this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0034J44DI?ie=UTF8&tag=thdifa-20&linkCode=as2&camp=17...SIN=B0034J44DI
It's JVC, and it's probably all we'll ever see. The specs are nice!

What is it with you and JVC ? Do you collect royalties from them, or have some great stock options ?
Anyway, I've seen a Samsung BR-burner, and one or two others for sale, where the price was not completely ridiculous for someone who had a real interest in this.

The only people giddy about Blu-ray are the upper-end hobbyists that shared the same curiosity for VCD, Laserdiscs, Divx, etc. In other words, not anybody that really matters. Indeed, people are far more interested in converting videos to Youtube or their new iPhone/Droid/iPad devices. Even though quality is vastly inferior to DVDs, that's where their interest lies. Our generation grew up on VHS tapes, so that's always a baseline quality measure. Beyond all this, most of us (business or personal) can't really afford adding Blu-ray stuff during a recession. And seeing how we get along fine without it, that idea will stick long-term and kill the format.

Remember that Blu-ray was the answer to a question nobody asked. (Excluding MPAA and manufacturers, who asked "How can we make more profit?") For years the shift has been towards portability, convertibility -- not adding several dozen more lines of resolution and calling it a day. And those are the still-unanswered questions that are actually being asked.

And that's really that.

Yeah, I think you're right on the rest.

[[_chef_]]

BR blanks are too expensive.

I disagree. Its still new tech, so what do you expect?

[Chopmeister]

Panasonic has a good one out here (New Zealand), having just released the BW-880, which superscedes last years BW-850. About $NZ1,400 (=$US 1,000) incl 12.5% sales tax. Probably quite a bit cheaper in sales in a month or two. Dual HD digital tuner, 500GB drive, burns both DVD and Blu-Ray discs. I am currently contemplating purchasing one.

[orsetto]

Ever since the earliest announcements, I've been intrigued by the Blu Ray recorder mfrs zeroing in on New Zealand as their target market. Panasonic especially went nuts over NZ, excluding every other country (aside from Japan) during its initial BD/HDD rollout, and they already have a third generation on deck. What makes NZ so attractive to them? Is consumption of recorders markedly higher there? Is per-capita income more upscale? Is the tuner design easier? It just seems odd, one would think the combined European market would be their primary target. North America, of course, is a lost cause: we'll never see another recorder here with a pricetag higher than $249 (even Funai/Magnavox were forced to drop the new MDR-531H from $269 to $229 within days of the launch). Here especially, LS pretty much nailed it: BD answers a question nobody asked. Until the players and discs dropped to DVD price points last year, they couldn't give them away. Now they do sell increasingly well, but lowball pricing defeated the whole point of introducing BD in the first place: hardware mfrs wanted to get off the $129 treadmill and sell $299 (minimum) players, and Hollywood wanted to raise the price floor on new releases from $14.99 back to $29.99. Sucks for them, but a nice opportunity for interested consumers while it lasts.

[usually_quiet]

The biggest impediment to BD recorders here is the prevalence of paid TV services requiring the use of an STB, and the low cost of renting a DVR from the service provider. Speaking for myself, I find using a third party recording device with an STB to be a PITA, compared to the old days when the recording device could tune the channel. BD recorders would only be convenient here for local channels on cable and recording TV from an antenna. Unfortunately, only 15%-20% of the US population watches TV mainly or exclusively from those sources, and many of them don't have enough interest or income to invest in a $1000 recording device.

As I recall, it took a while for DVD to supplant VHS. Initially DVD was expensive enough that only a few adopted it right away. I was probably one of the last to get something to play DVDs (in 2005). That was the moment at which I could no longer rent movies on VHS, and DVD recorder prices had dropped to the point where I felt I could afford to take a chance on one.

I expect DVD-only players to dissappear from the market in a few years, now that BD players are going down in price. DVDs and Blu-Ray will coexist for years, perhaps until both are killed by some other distribution format. Those with SDTVs or small HDTVs can get along fine with just DVDs, but the bigger the HDTV, the more attractive Blu-Ray becomes for watching movies.

As for portability and convertibility, not everyone enjoys watching movies on a 3-inch hand-held screen, and the older one is, the more likely that is to be true. Given that, I expect optical media will be with us for at least ten more years as a distribution format. It will also be awhile before everyone has Internet service suitable for watching streaming video on their TV.

[orsetto]

I expect DVD-only players to dissappear from the market in a few years, now that BD players are going down in price. DVDs and Blu-Ray will coexist for years, perhaps until both are killed by some other distribution format. Those with SDTVs or small HDTVs can get along fine with just DVDs, but the bigger the HDTV, the more attractive Blu-Ray becomes for watching movies.

Well, its a mixed bag really. The loss of dvd-only players would be more tolerable if so many BD players did not intentionally contaminate their DVD playback, making them worse than a cheap K-mart player at playing regular dvds. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, that optimizing a player for BD necessarily cruds up regular dvd performance- but it does seem to conveniently make BD more attractive than it might be otherwise. And unless you're strictly into new release hit movies, which are all mastered for HDTV, BD isn't always much of an improvement: many catalog film and TV titles look worse on BD than on regular "low-end" dvd. Its not all roses.

As for portability and convertibility, not everyone enjoys watching movies on a 3-inch hand-held screen, and the older one is, the more likely that is to be true.

I used to agree with this, but now I'm not so sure. We seem to be running headlong into a file-based universe, whether the performance, infrastructure, or older demographic is ready or not. Physical media carriers of any kind are viewed as disgustingly passe by anyone under 30, and that audience are the darlings of hardware mfrs and content creators. I hear more and more reports of huge TVs being bought solely for sports viewing, with everything else watched on a computer screen or laptop. For every home theater aficionado who actually expects HDTV video quality on an HDTV screen, there are five college students who could care less as long as they can watch what they want when they want on any of a half-dozen non-TV devices they own. Even the producers are starting to panic, with a few vainly hoping to reverse course and pull their shows offline because that huge number of viewers does not get counted in the all -important ratings game.

Hell, I'm pushing 50, and even I dump almost all my TV shows into a four year old iPod to watch on the run. I thought I'd never get used to a 2" screen, now I love it: its tack sharp, and the earbuds focus me more into the viewing experience. Times change, in very unexpected ways.

[Jbug1]

I guess most of you don't do searches for products. I have been burning BR's for over a year now with great results. BR burner costing around 580 and BD-R 25 for 12.00. with eather shinny foil or inkjet white faces. Do your homework.

[cbehr91]

I would like to see a consumer Blu-ray Recorder to come to the American market, only because I would be curious to see if it would sell well or not. They seem to be selling well overseas, but then again maybe their TV watching habits are different from ours.

The main reason I would want one is because the amount of storage on a Blu-ray disc blows DVDs out of the water (I don't remember the praticulars but it's a lot more). And just the fact of being able to hook up bunny ears and record in HD is just plain cool.

Remember too that the early DVD Recorders were downright hideous and it took until 2005 at the latest for a really good one to come out. The DVD format had already been around for years when that happened.

[usually_quiet]

I guess most of you don't do searches for products. I have been burning BR's for over a year now with great results. BR burner costing around 580 and BD-R 25 for 12.00. with eather shinny foil or inkjet white faces. Do your homework.

BD burners came up several times in the course of this thread and I'm pretty sure most of us know where to find a BD burner for a reasonable price. Acceptable BD media is harder to find at a good price. Yours is probably not good, given the price.

However, although he chose the wrong forum for the question initially (it was moved to the right one), the OP also asked about BD recorders, which is something different.

[orsetto]

Remember too that the early DVD Recorders were downright hideous and it took until 2005 at the latest for a really good one to come out.

And they promptly died forever beginning late 2005 thru 2006. Early adopters in 2003/2004 quickly discovered recording directly onto a DVD sucked, especially at the prices asked for the machines. Recording video without an HDD is too annoying to bother with, by the time mfrs got the prices of DVD/HDD combos down to the level of DVD-only recorders, the market had switched over to cable/satellite PVR sand TiVO. The window for generic independent recorders had slammed firmly shut. A sad ending, because as you say DVD/HDD recorders peaked in 2006 with great models from Pioneer, Panasonic, Toshiba and Sony.

Comparing the history of DVD players or recorders to BD doesn't work, you might as well compare VCRs with BD. Times and habits change more quickly now, there has been a dramatic and apparently irreversible shift in the way North Americans "record" TV content. Rental video stores have evaporated, along with the traditional disc rentals that kept momentum going from VHS to DVD. Cable and satellite have carefully conspired to squeeze out generic non-subscription recorders in favor of their own proprietary PVRs. ( The grotesque introduction of ATSC for off-air killed everyones "free" TV reception, handing the cable/satellite companies an unprecedented bonanza unwittingly financed by taxpayers). Nobody cares that they can't burn discs with these PVRs, because nobody records anything to keep anymore- they either watch it on the free on-demand channels later if they get the urge, or they simply buy the commercial season sets on sale at Target or Wal*Mart. There is just no market, none whatsoever, for even $199 recorders anymore. If you think Panasonic and Sony are going to cater to the cheapskate, incredibly picky American market with $999 or $599 BD/HDD recorders, and lose their bloody shirts in the process like they did with DVD recorders- think again. BD recording is not going to happen, not in the States, not in this "new economy" we're stuck in for the duration.

Which circles back to my original question: why do BD recorders actually do well in New Zealand, even at $1000+ US, but hardly anywhere else? Must be something going on there, like reliable off-air HD broadcasting and no cable/satellite PVR competition. In Europe a lot of digital broadcasting is still SD, and most displays are smaller than 40", so there's still a big market for regular DVD/HDD recorders, but not much call for BD yet. US/Canada demand would be too small to bother. So it looks like standalone BD recorders will be mostly a regional Japan-Australia-NZ product.

[usually_quiet]

Going back to the first post in this thread. The OP asked about computers that come with a built-in BD burner. Those exist too, although I haven't seen any with a BD burner installed as the standard optical drive option. For people who don't want to add a BD burner to their new PC after purchase, select Dell and HP models can be custom-ordered with one as an upgrade.

[Seeker47]

Which circles back to my original question: why do BD recorders actually do well in New Zealand, even at $1000+ US, but hardly anywhere else? Must be something going on there, like reliable off-air HD broadcasting and no cable/satellite PVR competition. In Europe a lot of digital broadcasting is still SD, and most displays are smaller than 40", so there's still a big market for regular DVD/HDD recorders, but not much call for BD yet. US/Canada demand would be too small to bother. So it looks like standalone BD recorders will be mostly a regional Japan-Australia-NZ product.

The other thing that does not quite track with this NZ thing is population. Even as a "test bed." You could throw in the whole population of Australia as a bonus, and have what ? Something like the population of Portugal ? I don't see how that equals viable, no matter how upscale they might be, or factoring in having much less of the lazy alternatives we get served up here on the cheap, etc. It's odd, for sure.

Still, I'm sort of glad that it's not just Japan, which is too easily dismissed as a trendy, fad-driven, gadget-crazy exception. Some of us may verge on the nutty -- by being so atypical in our interests vs. the vast majority of N. Amer. consumers -- but when that day comes where we can no longer repair our favored archival recording solutions (or come to the conclusion that we now need to be able to pursue this hobby in high def), we will be forced to follow the advice of that VH member who keeps exhorting us to build our own HTPC box. It's not something I'm particularly gung ho to do, so in that sense I envy the NZ folks who enjoy a decent ready-made high-def recorder option -- never mind the price.

[usually_quiet]

Still, I'm sort of glad that it's not just Japan, which is too easily dismissed as a trendy, fad-driven, gadget-crazy exception. Some of us may verge on the nutty -- by being so atypical in our interests vs. the vast majority of N. Amer. consumers -- but when that day comes where we can no longer repair our favored archival recording solutions (or come to the conclusion that we now need to be able to pursue this hobby in high def), we will be forced to follow the advice of that VH member who keeps exhorting us to build our own HTPC box. It's not something I'm particularly gung ho to do, so in that sense I envy the NZ folks who enjoy a decent ready-made high-def recorder option -- never mind the price.

I have a TV tuner installed in my PC, though I don't have a blu-ray burner yet. The difficulties connected with using PCs for recording HDTV are much the same as for other 3rd-party recording solutions.

They are fine for recording local channels (over-the-air or from cable) and analog cable, although a stronger signal may be needed for a PC tuner than for a TV or consumer recording device. Copy protection isn't allowed to be used on over-the-air channels at present, so copying recordings onto removable media is not a problem. Analog channels aren't often copy protected.

There are more difficulties recording digital cable or satellite using a PC. The HD and SD channels, except for locals, are increasingly likely to be encrypted and sometimes copy protected. Also, when recording from an STB, installing an IR receiver with IR blasters may be necessary.

Many PC TV tuners are able to record SD output from an STB, but often the only avalailble option the STB permits for is SD video is 4:3 letterboxed, not anamorphic widescreen. The Hauppauge HD-PVR is presently a good solution for recording HD channels from STB component-out, as long as that connection can be used for HD.

Some new CableCARD tuners (~$200 for 2 tuners or ~$400 for 4 tuners) are being released this year, but will only work properly with Vista's Media Center (when installed in a certified Media Center PC) and Windows 7 Media Center. (One of Cable Labs' requirements for PVR software to be certified to use CableCARD tuners is that the software must obey copy protection restrictions applied to the signal.)