Sharp Claims First Blu-ray Disc Recorder

February 16th, 2007

This format war has been raging for a couple years now and it looks like Blu-Ray has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into the fold with a Blu-Ray Disc recorder. The battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray doesn’t seem to have any end in sight and it figures to be that both formats will have some sort of relevance for a long time. Many believe that eventually both formats may be supposrted in one player.

The interest to me comes a lot from the gaming consoles. With the release of the Playstation 3 in the last few months for roughly $600, which in turn has an internal blu-ray player in it, and the XBox 360 that utilizes an outside HD-DVD player, these machines have much mor influence on the format I will tend to end up with. $600 for a Blu-ray player is a bargain, but getting a gaming console on top of it is a major purchasing point for many. The console war is going to make this format war much more likely to just rage on for many years and eventually find us with a happy medium of machines that support both.

Sharp has taken the wraps off the first Blu-ray high-definition disc player that has recording capabilities. The device, set for release in Japan in March, can record content directly from a TV. Expected to sell for $1,200, the new player may advance the Blu-ray cause in the high-definition disc.read more