Panasonic to launch HD recorders in Japan

Panasonic has caught up with its Japanese compatriot Sharp by introducing three HD recorders equipped with Blu-ray and hard drives for the Japanese market. The top of the line is a 1-terabyte DMR-BW900 capable of recording up to a whopping 381 hours of HD video. To accomplish this, the new entries are all outfitted with advanced MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 in addition to the usual MPEG-2 encoder. The former is the same compression technology found in Blu-ray and HD-DVD products.

Besides a pair of high-definition broadcast tuners, the higher-end DMR-BW900 and 500GB DMR-BW800 models also claim "judder-free 1080p24," a quality that puts both on par with other full-featured Blu-ray players. These, together the 250GB DMR-BW700, will be launched in Japan on November 1.

(Source: Crave Asia)