We'll go ahead and hurt the feelings of those in Asia, North America and the Cook Islands: this here set is bound for the European market only (for now, anyway), but hey, at least we know the technology is here. Over in the UK, one Cello Electronics has issued the first
HDTV that records OTA (Freeview) content directly to an SD card, giving users an easy option for shuffling recorded content to portable players. The set itself boasts twin TV tuners, a built-in EPG, split-screen functionality and an integrated DVD player; as for sizes, you'll find it in 22-, 26- and 32-inch flavors. Sadly, you'll be stuck with "just" 1,440 x 900 pixels and no HDMI socket, but those who couldn't care less can take ownership starting next month for TBD, £399.99 ($661) or £469.99 ($777) in order of mention.
Update: Cello pinged us to say that all three models do indeed have HDMI sockets. The larger two have a pair, while the 22-incher has one.
posted Jun 24th 2009 8:59AM
Do the motion picture studios, cable, satellite, dvr makers pay HDTV manufacturers to NOT allow this technology in the U.S.? Panasonic in the UK has tv's that record (R series, 500GB drive to record digital) and soon will have blu-ray players (DMR-BS850) that will record.
Here in the U.S. Panasonic even crippled the ota guide on it's 2009 tv's. Who is paying to keep technology out of our hands?
I don't know if they US manufacturers stopped this or not.
OTA (broadcast) HD is "in the clear" by law in the US, so you can record to disk it if you have a tuner and a firewire port.
That said, I would not be surprised if they rallied against this technology because it's *convenient* and *easy* -- even your mom could do it. With firewire capping, you need at least some computer savvy to do so.
-Pie
For those of you blowin' thousands of dollars on Blu-Ray discs you might want to pull back on that. This is surely the way HD content is going to go for those people that need something physical in their hand. Disc format will be gone and SD cards or something similar will be the way of the future.
ummm, last time I checked a 50GB SD card didnt exist. and if it did it would be really expensive. For sure more than the .25 mass producing BD factories pay per disc.
A OTA HD recording is 8GB alone. Unless you do some kinda of transcoding your going to need a large stack of SD cards. I know I dont want to try and organize those!
~Mitchell
disk will always be cheaper no matter what. look things were starting to creep up on dvd boom blu ray, once blu ray is extremely cheaper, there will be a new disk. i doubt the "disk" drive will go away ever.
According to their 'road-map' we will have 2tb cards and flash drives within 2yrs -
and with data transfer speeds of 300mbps (6 x faster than Blu-ray).
h--p://crave.cnet.co.uk/accessories/0,39101000,49300513,00.htm
(even if they're a full 2 or 3yrs out on that or it takes a fuyrther 2 or 3 years for prices to fall - or prices of the current biggest 32gb/64gb cards/drives to drop - it's still fast enough given BD's 'running in treacle' lift-off speed)
Blu-ray disks and the necessary burners are just far too expensive, out-dated, bulky and pointless......and most of all time limited because they are being over-taken by events before they get a proper foot-hold in the market
(be honest, Blu-ray, at the current tiny growth-rates, is years away from getting anywhere even remotely close to true mass-market adoption - and the global recession just ensures it's going nowhere fast in whatever time it has left) .
HDDs is the most secure, cheapest and most convenient $/gb (by miles).
Flash is set to join it as the cheapest and most convenient storage.
I would dearly love to junk all my space hungry, dust-attracting disks & cases for a book or 2 of big capacity SD cards or a little rack of tb sized flash drives.
It's coming. Great.
Multi-Format-Mayhem - You take every opportune post (related or not) to complain about Blu-ray. You hate the format, we get it. You're also wrong about 90% of the time. We get that too. (What you don't get is that BD is at about the same adoption rate as DVD, so if this were 10 years ago, you would have basically been using similar arguments to espouse the virtues of VHS over DVDs.)
As an example of your 90%... this SD card isn't even anywhere near close to even in the proximity of a competitor for BDs. This is a technology for OTA recording. And at 8GB you can fit 1 hour (or 2 hours of very compressed) mpeg4. It's NOT a new delivery system. It's OTA recording, which has existed in a ton of different forms for years.
In the US, you can actually request a Firewire/IEEE1394 cable box, and capture streams directly to your HDD (assuming you have a Mac, or a PC with a firewire connection). That didn't turn out to be a BD killer, so why would this be? And heck, great way to store those caps is to... you guessed it... put them on a Blu-ray. That way you can store them labeled on a shelf, and your family (who has no idea which HDD holds which movie) can get to them easily.
-Pie
EP
You really ought to know by now that your lame ad hominem attacks are no substitute for addressing the points I've raised.
My original post was in response to Mitchell's comments (about no 50gb cards/drives) which as you can now see are quickly becoming very out-dated and behind the times.
I realise you're may be one of the Blu-ray fanboy gang here who can't bear to see or hear anyone express less than flattering views about blu-ray but nevermind that can't be helped.
I guess the fanboys are sore after all that preaching and evangelising to end up watching their day-dreams of Blu-ray domination turn to cr@p?
What I said about imminent tb sized cards/drives is true.
It is also true that their max data transfer speeds are going to be far higher than Blu-ray can manage at its max.
The link proves I am not making this up and the alternatives I am talking about are soon to arrive.
Unfortunately for you 4gb, 8gb & 16gb SD cards & flash drive pens are widely available & are already very inexpensive right now.
This means a very nice high quality high def encode can be had on the net
(those sizes are more than perfectly adequate for a high quality encode, especially once you strip out all the nonsense most say they neither want nor need) at DVD5, DVD9 or in a portable and universally easily read card/drive.
Not only is Blu-ray movie sales growth stalled (at a very poor $16 million this week and less than $8 million the week before according to Nielson) but burner growth too is almost non-existant as are BD blank media sales.
It is simply not true to claim Blu-ray sales match those of DVD.
It is also particularly relevant that DVD never had the luxury of being launched built-in to a well known game console brand bound to sell in multi-millions fairly quickly, a fact which makes the current dreadfully small BD movie sales numbers even more pathetic & minute.
The truth is that the rational to bother much with Blu-ray is shrinking with every month and nothing the Blu-ray fanboys have said makes one jot of difference to that.
Anyone who still imagines Blu-ray is going to replace DVD as the majority share holder in the retail movie market is just kidding themselves (as the news, month after month, proves).
Sorry that you find these views so difficult to respect even if you differ in yours.
Believe it or not, I agree with you on a point. SD is getting cheaper, and will continue to do so.
But here's where you completely missed my point. SD is not going to replace Blu-ray, not until BD reaches its end-of-life (10 years minimum), and even then it's up in the air. The movie studios have already gone through hell and back to adopt the standard (just like they did with DVD, which was even more difficult in many ways), and they aren't changing that paradigm any time soon.
Now onto misinformation.
You continue to do is cite misinformation to "show" that Blu-ray is dying. If you check blu-raystats.com, which lives up to its name on a weekly basis, you will see that BD market share against DVD has GROWN steadily (albeit slowly) since inception. Including this year. Where at some points in January it was 8% of DVD sales, this week it is 12%.
So you are wrong about it "stalling."
DVD WAS installed into a well-known console, the PS2. (Sony claimed for years that helped the format succeed, though dubious IMHO.) It also was installed into the original XBox. So you are wrong there as well.
Until the recession, BD was growing in marketshare "month after month" *faster* than DVD. In January things slowed -- DVD did not face a recession -- but it is still growing. So wrong again.
And the notion that an 8 GB or 4 GB is an "adequate" (you're not serious I hope) cap / encode, or anywhere near the quality of a 30-45GB BD encode is just -- I can't think of a nice term -- insane? nuts? crazy? ludicrous? All of the above! I have hundreds of caps of varying bitrates, in various codecs. BD always wins against the lower bitrate version. Always. And by miles.
So, 4GB/8GB being "adequate," wrong to the 100th power.
Okay, on burners.
BD burners are slow on the uptake, which I agree with. Price is key. Apple not including them is key. But BD-R 25 is less than $8.00, which a year ago was the price for two DVD-R-DLs (8GB). I don't know the stats on DVD-R at the same point in life, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is better, though not by a lot. Pure speculation on my part, however, as I didn't follow burner adoption, and am willing to admit it.
But as I said, you comment in opportune post, whether it's related to BD or not. You are selling every format under the sun *except* Blu-ray. I willfully admit to enjoying BD as much as (more than, actually) DVD in its time. You, however, deny your absolute hatred for the format, and continue to spread misinformation to forward your agenda. So if *I* am a "fanboi" for correcting your erroneous posts, so be it. For you, however, "hater" comes to mind, and it's a lot more appropriate than my "fanboi" monicker.
-Pie
EP
DVD did not launch with the PS2. PS2 came years later (about 3 IIRC).
It is nothing like the same as when Blu-ray launched with PS3.
That's just a cast iron fact.
I can also show trade data which shows DVD growth easily exceeded Blu-ray
h--p://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/8002/hd-DVD_outsells_blu-ray.html
(in fact it's high def with HD DVD & Blu-ray combined, published in March 2008 btw).
Nothing has changed since then to lead anyone to seriously think Blu-ray has put in a massive growth spurt.
Where's your data?
Nielson's weird cherry picked stats is it?
Nielson in fact shows Blu-ray doing really badly lately btw.
Encodes?
I've seen some superb amatuer work (just think what professionals could do with professional software) at DVD5, DVD9 and 12gb - 14gb sizes.
I suspect loads of people here have too so I doubt you'll get much support for claiming it's all awful.
Btw you're not trying to tell us that every Blu-ray is an amazing high def transfer are you?
I've seen amazing high def on every format and of every type, unfortunately for Blu-ray (and for that matter HD DVD) a very ordinary transfer not really that much better than upscaled DVD is not exactly uncommon.
Blu-ray also hobbles itself by being about as user unfriendly as can be, being slow and needing frequent firmware fixes, anathema in the true mass-market (which it remains not even remotely close to breaking into).
That's nothing to do with 'love' or 'hate' (such absurd notions in the contect of CE products), it's just the truth and the facts of the matter.
Blu-ray is indeed failing to take off.
Far too little & far too late.
Even Sony have set up 2 digital distribution services (one for Bravia owners and the other, ironically, for PS3 owners).
Every week we see more and more VOD, streaming and downloading services coming up here nevermind anywhere else.
Deny the truth all you like but Blu-ray is a dead-format walking right now and nothing could happen fast enough now to alter that one little bit.
No-one (outside the blind fanboy gang) cares, enough.
(and even there the truth is that even the PS3 boys - as the poor weekly Blu-ray movie sales numbers prove - are being very very picky about which movies they think is 'worth' buying in high def)
Discs will be around for one main reason... they are universal (size wise). The same size disc for CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays (BDs). Memory cards have all sorts of sizes (from Memory Stick, to SD, to Compact Flash, etc). For this reason (as well as the cost factor as other have named in the reviews above) discs will remain around & not be "replaced" by memory cards.
Is Cello related to Mitsubishi, or did they just blatantly copy Mitsubishi's idea for the screen image (i.e. girl with flying hair)? Mitsubishi's girl is much better looking imho. :)
I like the idea of recording onto a SD card, but I doubt we'll ever see that kind of tech in the north american market. The content owners have too much control here.
I own a Panasonic player that's about 3 years old that has built in recordable SD card facility.
Quality isn't that hot for TV playback, but it's handy if the twin HD recorder I've got is in use and there's something else I want to record.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Should have said, I own a Panasonic Plasma TV about 3 years old, not a player ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
> DVD did not launch with the PS2
The PS2 *in Japan* launched very close to DVD acceptance. Americans thought the PS2's DVD inclusion wasn't useful, and it wasn't to Americans. But bundling the PS2 and the DVD was a highly successful strategy in Japan.
just saying. @ Jun 25th 2009 11:09AM
"The PS2 *in Japan* launched very close to DVD acceptance."
These are the facts -
DVD's launch was 3 years+ before PS2 and completely unlike that of the PS3 which effectively launched Blu-ray at what was then the most affordable level and highest spec compared to the original players, with a player just a few months into Blu-ray's 'life'
(June 1996 v Nov 1996)?
It's apple v oranges.
The PS2 came out in Japan in March 2000, late Oct 2000 in the USAQ and late Nov 2000 in Europe.
h--p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_2
DVD came to Japan in Nov 1996, the USA in Mar 1997 and Europe in 1998.
h--p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_player
"Acceptance" has nothing to do with my original point.
DVD's launch (and therefore its initial growth) is nothing like the same or directly comparable with that of Blu-ray.
Taking account of the millions of PS3's out there and the inclusion of a Blu-ray player in them and the fact that Blu-ray's growth is slower than DVDs
(or, if we're feeling like being really generous let's say at best it is similar, favoring either side, it doesn't really matter....hell, lets go the whole hog and give you the benefit of the doubt and say Blu-ray is a little ahead)
it still all adds up to a horribly poor movie disk sales performance well wide of the original expectations
(50% of movie sales by 2008, if anyone cares to recall).
The fact is, according to Neilson, they got $16 million this week and less than $8 million last = a shockingly bad set of results at this stage, given the number of Blu-ray players out there.
Sorry, I know some have a real problem seeing & hearing it, but you just can't easily get round that fact.
gah, I did it again. As a gamer, it is interesting to me that it was the DVD player that was important to the PS2 launch and thus the resulting affect BD had on the PS3 launch. I had it backwards, the disc format had an impact on the game system. I believe M-f-m is arguing the platforms lack of affect on the format.
"For months after the release of PlayStation 2, the system was mostly used for watching DVD movies. (Prior to the release of PlayStation 2, the DVD market was small in Japan.) The biggest-selling disc for PlayStation 2 during this time was the DVD version of the hit movie, "The Matrix.""
http://www.url.biz/Articles/Article-436.html
That was my point. And about the death of BD, sorry, I wasn't really paying attention.