Launch Date 26/06/09
http://www.hdeverything.co.uk/deeplink.htm

What is this an advert for - the DVD / blueray recorders or something new to complete with the humax

I assume it's the official launch of the Blu-ray Freesat recorders, if a standard twin tuner HD PVR was ready to go then we would have heard about it long ago.

It will be the launch of the 2 blu-ray/hdd/freesat recorders and 1 DVD/HDD/Freesat recorder.

DMR-BS850, 500GB recorder £999

DMR-BS750, 250GB recorder £899

DMR-XS350, DVD/200GB recorder £699

Make's the 320Gb Foxsat look like the bargain of the century

makes me wonder will they sell many with the way things are people say £250 is a lot for the pvr now that much is crazy.

If this new range from Panasonic had a Sky viewing card slot so consumers could use it instead of the dated Sky+ HD box it may have a market.

For use with Freesat at these prices I would imagine sales will be low.

And of course I understand the ITV will not permit it to save ITV HD programs - if you can find one

Automan.

The issue here is that even if the Panasonic range had a card slot (I don't know if it does or not?) like the Humax recorder then it couldn't be used for Sky anyway as Sky won't issue a CAM for it.

The Humax HDR is all set for a Sky card if Sky played ball.

Well you can with the existing cards but it's not an elegant method and who knows if the new issue cards allow the use of emulators.

TBH I can kind of understand the high price for Blu Ray recording (although I don't think its justified given the way BR recorders for PC's have fallen in price), but how can they even start to justify the DVD recorders price? You can buy a DVD recorder for a pc for £20.

So how do you justfiy a £699 price tag for a 200gb Freesat PVR with a £20 dvd transport added?

Ridiculous.

I'd pay no more than the price of a Humax for that. And no more than £500 for the top BR model.

Well they don't use PC DVD drives, they use purpose built mechanisms, which bear no resemblance to the 'throw away' prices for PC components.


No problem, you won't be buying one - as I won't.

Aren't Sky legally obliged to?

I think they will sell quite well, but obviously only die-hard fans. I already have quite a substantial waiting list and will be having one myself to play with

Does seem rather high however as always the first gen production r&d costs are spread across the first few thousands units not 100's of thousands hence the early adopter premium. A company even like Panasonic simply can not risk selling below cost (and may not even be allowed to in certain markets) without knowing 100% they will sell X amount of units to cover costs and go into profit.

It should also have incorporated a DTT tuner as well, mind you everything starts again when DTT HD arrives

Nope otherwise they would.
Their hardware has the capability to accept a CAM through the digital interface built into the board but side stepping issues with third party access to NDS Videoguard by not actually offering CAM's to their own subscribers as it's built into the STB itself thus meeting their legal obligations.

Bruce Willis has a stake in Panasonic?

I'll get me coat..............

No, they are legally obliged to produce cams, which they did - two of them allegedly (meeting the plural requirement), which are locked away. They aren't legally obliged to make them available, and there are plenty of reasons not to want to do so.

A transport is a transport unless you're going high end. Its just a big rip off in my opinion.

As for DVD recorders, you can buy an entire recorder for around £80 as a free standing unit and that includes a whole host of things an integrated recorder simply isn't going to need as its already built into the PVR eg. Casing, PSU, remote, display, power leads etc etc.

So how does a HD PVR box which Humax can sell for £250 become a £699 box with the addition of a DVD recorder transport and a smaller hard drive?

Figures simply don't add up to me. Just seems to be a huge premium for the brand name.

It's £300 anyway, so assume £400 for a Panasonic, plus £300 for the DVD recorder section.

Still far too much, and I wouldn't be buying one under any circumstances - not even if it was £199.


I'm not denying that!

Plus it's a unique product (for now).

Doesn't the Panasonic have an H.264 encoder built in which the Humax doesn't?

Does it record from a HD source then ?. Very doubtfull I would have thought as any HD source say a camcorder will already be mpeg4 HD.

Unlikely. H.264 is MPEG4 (Part 10). I understand Freesat transmissions are MPEG4. So Freesat must be able to decode MPEG4.

Wasn't the OP asking if it could encode H264 not decode it so it could record external HD to the HDD ?

AFAIK all UK HD channels are H.264 (AVC) the other (less efficient) version of MPEG4 is DivX/XVid.


Yes I thought the idea was it could reencode HD to make it a smaller file size to fit on a DVD?

It can certainly reduce the bit rate of an existing H264 stream to fit more but lower quality onto a disc. Not sure but don't think this actually needs an encoder, Certainly programmes like DVDshrink can compress mpeg2 without re-encoding