Pioneer says to launch Blu-ray recorders this year

[gadgtfreek]

Pioneer says to launch Blu-ray recorders this year | Technology | Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese consumer electronics maker Pioneer Corp (6773.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday it plans to launch Blu-ray DVD recorders by the end of the year, taking aim at a rapidly growing market after the end of a bitter format battle.
Pioneer is developing Blu-ray recorders with help from Sharp Corp (6753.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Pioneer's top shareholder with a 14 percent stake. Sharp already offers Blu-ray recorders.
Pioneer plans to start selling Blu-ray recorders in Japan before the year-end shopping season, followed by overseas launches.
The selling price and unit sales target have yet to be set, a Pioneer spokesman said.
Blu-ray recorder demand in Japan is likely to jump 18 fold to 3.6 million units by 2012, according to Fuji Chimera Research Institute.

 

[vurbano]

interesting

 

[jayn_j]

Been waiting for this. It is going to set up a whole set of issues though with monitor ports, pass through and proper HDCP handling. I wonder if the box will have the ability to take in a HDMI input, record and then pass it back out over HDMI. It would also need to be able to pass through HDCP signals when the box wasn't recording.

The real question will be if and how it handles HDCP when the flag is set. Will it simply refuse to record? Will it properly output the recorded signal to the TV with the no copy flag set? Will it allow pass through while recording and properly set the no record flag? I bet they get it wrong the first time.

There are also no receivers that I know of that support a HDMI monitor mode for more complex multi-source recording. This will probably drive next year's upgrades from Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo and others on their upper end receivers.