console type blu-ray recorders, are any for sale in United States

[for fair use]

I know that they have been for sale in Japan for some time. Would like to buy one?

[orsetto]

No, there are no BD/HDD consoles available in North America like the Panasonics sold in Japan and Europe. There are some industry rumors floating around that Funai, the OEM mfr of Magnavox, is debating whether to introduce a BD/HDD with ATSC tuner next year as successor to the aging Magnavox DVD/HDD lineup. But at this point its vaporware and not very likely (although stranger things have happened: the continued renewal of the Magnavox DVD/HDD units is itself bizarre). The closest you can get to a North American console BD recorder is the semi-pro JVC line of BD/HDD units, the most affordable being the SR-HD1250US at approx $995. It does not have a tuner, and cannot record in full HDTV quality from anything but select camcorders and the handful of old cable/sat boxes with compatible (and activated) DV/FireWire connections. Nice recorders, but pointless unless you're an event videographer and need to make BDs from your HD camcorder.

The biggest issue holding back a consumer USA/Canada BD/HDD is the same one that killed off DVD recorders: the uniquely North American dependence on proprietary, monopolistic, incompatible cable/satellite services. The rest of the world relies almost entirely on off-air antenna for their signals, plus a couple of govt-sponsored satellite services and a couple of private satellite services (cable is unheard of). Both the off-air and satellite systems are standardized across multiple countries, as is the TiVO-like program timer guide system, so mfrs can profitably make and sell uniform integrated dual-tuner recorder models all over the world.

Except in North America. We have a completely different broadcast standard requiring a different off-air DTV tuner from the rest of the world, and hardly anyone here wants to record from off-air anyway. Instead, we have huge penetration of competing cable services and private satellite services. None of these services permit recorder mfrs to include built-in tuners for all available channels: you need an external decoder box. The decoder boxes are a pain to synchronize with the recorder timer, and they don't offer recordable HDTV outputs: only standard def. So the North American market for DVD recorders died (because they couldn't integrate easily for cable timer recording) and mfrs won't even bother trying to sell BD recorders here because we don't have any recordable BD-quality signals aside from off-air, which nobody who'd buy a BD recorder really uses. The moment has passed: even if we worked out all the cable/satellite nonsense tomorrow, the mass market wouldn't care. They've all moved on to TiVO or leased cable/sat PVRs.

[handyguy]

Why not use your computer?

[jman98]

Would like to buy one?

That's NOT a question. You don't just put a question mark at the end of whatever the hell you feel like. Well, you do if you want to look ignorant.

orsetto covered why they don't exist here, except I disagree a little as to the main cause. My feeling is that while integration with TV services was a problem, the main reason DVD recorders died here is that Americans have become obsessive to an unhealthy amount about "clutter" and most Americans simply don't want to keep any discs around. I know people who have ripped every disc they own to one lossy format or another and then thrown the discs in the trash or sold them for peanuts or given them away. It'll be fun to see what happens when their disk drives die.

[usually_quiet]

orsetto covered why they don't exist here, except I disagree a little as to the main cause. My feeling is that while integration with TV services was a problem, the main reason DVD recorders died here is that Americans have become obsessive to an unhealthy amount about "clutter" and most Americans simply don't want to keep any discs around. I know people who have ripped every disc they own to one lossy format or another and then thrown the discs in the trash or sold them for peanuts or given them away. It'll be fun to see what happens when their disk drives die.

I would say that for many people it is not clutter-phobia so much as realizing that they don't want to watch most of things they record more than once, and that the few things they would want to watch repeatedly can most often be obtained conveniently in some other way.