At a recent press conference, Pioneer introduced its first hard drive equipped Blu-ray Disc recorders. Along with support for BonusView, the 1TB BDR-WD900 and 500GB BDR-WD700 offer 1080/24p output, dual digital tuners and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream output via HDMI. The recorders also support MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression technology, which allows them to store nearly 11 hours of HD video onto a 25GB Blu-ray Disc or, in the case of the BDR-WD900, about 450 hours on its built in hard drive.
Pioneer Corporation announced today the introduction of the BDR-WD900, a Blu-ray Disc (BD) Recorder equipped with a 1-TB hard drive, and the BDR-WD700, a BD Recorder equipped with a 500-GB hard drive, for the Japanese market.
With digital terrestrial broadcasts becoming increasingly common, requirements of TV viewers are undergoing a change. Whereas previously viewers wanted to record as much high-definition content as possible, and as easily possible, they now want to record content in the highest quality possible. Thus, the market for BD recorders is rapidly expanding. Pioneer aims to meet this demand by launching its first HDD/BD recorders that can record two digital high-definition programs simultaneously for longer hours in the HD picture quality.
The Pioneer BD recorders BDR-WD900 and BDR-WD700 will be available in Japan in the early of October, 2008 (with no retail price suggested).
While Pioneer has not announced pricing for its new recorders, AV Watch expects the BDR-WD900 and BDR-WD700 to cost about 280,000 Yen ($2628US) and 180,000 Yen ($1689US), respectively.
