Panasonic preps for Beijing Olympics with three HD recorders

Philip Wong | Feb 20, 2008

While digital video recorders are regular entries from Panasonic's extensive home consumer lineup, its DMR-XW320 and XW120 are the company's latest DVD offerings with HD recording capability. Using the latest MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 data compression technology, these sleek 244mm-deep recorders are capable of recording up to 3 hours of 1,920 x 1,080-pixel video footage on dual-layer (DL) DVDs. Simultaneous digital broadcast recording is also adequately covered, thanks to inbuilt dual multiformat TV tuners.

For those who prefer Blu-ray compatibility, its 250GB DMR-BR500 supports just about every disc format available on shelves (minus the defunct HD-DVD). These range from Blu-ray to DVD and CD recordables and rewriteables. On 50GB Blu-ray DL, the recording time can be extended up to 18 hours, though that can be further stretched to a whopping 94 hours 30 minutes on hard drive. However, there're two teeny-weeny problems. All three recorders output only 1080i via HDMI and are strictly meant for the Japanese market. Duh!

Via Akihabara news | Photo credit: Panasonic

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