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Sharp to release Blu-ray recorders with storage

Sharp is about to unleash some of the world's first Blu-ray recorders for HD television with four new models slated for release in Japan from next month.

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Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury

Sharp is about to unleash some of the world's first Blu-ray recorders for HD television with four new models slated for release in Japan from next month.
Sharp's BD-HDW20 and BD-HDW15 Blu-ray recorders to be released in Japan in December.

According to the Sharp Japan Web site (via Google Translate), the flagship of the new AQUOS range model will be a Blu-ray recorder with dual HD tuners and 1TB of hard drive space. The BD-HDW20 is expected to retail for 300,000 Yen (AU$3,022). This model will be followed by the BD-HDW15 with 500GB of space for 200,000 Yen (AU$2,014).

There will also be two standalone BD recorders with only a single tuner and no HDD -- the dual-layer BD-AV10 (120,000 Yen/AU$1,209) and the single-layer BD-AV1 (100,000 Yen/AU$1,007).

The two hard-drive models will feature HDMI version 1.3 compliance and "1080/24p" capability and be able to pass-through undecoded Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD streams.

The new AQUOS-branded recorders will also be able to operate in "one-button" mode via HDMI with compatible AQUOS televisions.

However, those waiting for another dual-format for both HD DVD and Blu-ray will have to wait a little longer as "at present time there is no schedule".