Standalone DVD recorders with a built in hard drive are selling very well in Japan with nearly 60% of global sales sold there alone. Pioneer estimates global sales to more than double next year from a 3.6 million unit sale this year to 8.24 million units next year. Like with the initial sale of DVD players, DVD recorder prices are expected to fall down to affordable prices in the next few years and likely replace the VCR sales.
Despite the US being the world's largest electronics market, DVD recorder sales are still very slow throughout the US. The likely reason has more to do with DVD recorders being sold in the US without an internal hard drive rather than the expensive pricing. Consumers seem to be more interested in hard drive based players such as the popular TiVo based HDD recorders over DVD recorders. While hard drive based players have a limited storage capacity, they are much simpler to operate and there is no worry about finding a blank disc or purchasing the right type (due to incompatible +/-/RAM standards) to make a recording or finding that unlabeled disc with a recording 'made earlier'.
DVD recorders with a built in hard drive offers all the advantages of HDD based recorders while allowing the user to archive their recordings at a later stage to DVD recordable for backup and to free space for more recordings. Sony aim to produce an all-in-one solution '“ the PSX which will feature a 160/250 GB HDD for up to 204/325 hours of recordings as well as feature a built in DVD recorder, Satellite TV tuner and a Playstation 2 for games. GristyMcFisty submitted the following news from Yahoo via our news submit :
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Digital video disc (DVD) recorders armed with hard disk drives are at the heart of a digital electronics boom sweeping Japan and, if consumers can overlook their hefty price tags, they may soon replace the 50 million VCRs a year being sold globally. "It really is convenient: I record shows on to the hard drive and erase them later or copy the stuff I want to keep on to DVDs," said Daisuke Kouno, a 25-year old car mechanic and owner of a Pioneer Corp DVD recorder with an 80-gigabyte hard drive. Nomura Securities estimates the global DVD recorder market will reach 500 billion yen ($ 4.6 billion) this year, while Pioneer estimates global demand to more than double next year to 8.24 million units from a forecast for 3.6 million units this year. Market leader Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd., maker of the Panasonic brand, Pioneer and Toshiba Corp gained an early advantage, but competitors at home and abroad are aggressively trying to close the gap with new products. Latecomer Sony Corp aims to make a splash with this weekend's launch of "PSX," an entertainment system that includes a DVD recorder with a hard disk drive plus a PlayStation 2 game machine and satellite TV tuner. "Just looking at reservations for the PSX, we have so much demand that we can barely handle it all," Sony president Kunitake Ando told Reuters in an interview last week. "We have no concerns about its sales." Electronics retailer BicCamera said it would open some of its stores an hour early on Saturday to handle PSX sales. Sony's DVD recorder market share has jumped to 20 percent from almost nothing since it began selling in November a new line-up called "sugoroku," roughly translated as "great recording," Ando said. DVD/HDD recorders sell for anywhere between 60,000 yen ($ 550) for one with an 80-gigabyte hard drive to 130,000 yen for one with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Pioneer estimated last month DVD recorder prices would fall about five to 10 percent per year. Read the full story here. |
With many hard drive based DVD recorders coming in capacities of 160 GB and up, DVD recordable's and VHS tapes can easily be done away with for most everyday TV recordings. Despite the current popularity of Video recorders, not many would have a collection of over 100 tapes to even fill a 160 GB hard drive.
Then again, DVD recordables cannot be totally done away with either no matter how large the HD capacities get due to one major issue: What happens if the hard drive were to crash or go corrupt? Thus the hybrid solution is likely to be the future although DVD recordable standards (+/-/RAM) have yet to be finalised.
Discuss and read more on recording hardware on our Recording Hardware Forum.
Source: Yahoo Technology News
