Panasonic launches two DVD hard disk players

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 14 Jul 2003 at 13:09

Panasonic, the consumer brand of Matsushita, is to launch two DVD players with hard disks and DVD-RAM/DVD-R recording capabilities.

The DMR-E100 and DMR-E200H sport a 120GB and 160GB drive respectively and also offer slots for SD and PCMCIA cards for transferring data.

Panasonic is backing DVD-RAM, claiming it is becoming the de facto standard for recordable optical disk media. 'The multimedia recording capability of DVD-RAM discs , including their ability to store JPEG data for digital photos and MPEG2 video data, is a key advantage over other DVDS recording formats,' said Tokikazu Matsumoto, who heads Panasonic's AV division.

DVD-RAM is indeed a popular format, but only in as much as it has been around the longest. But being designed as a format for archiving data, it may not be best choice for recording movies as many consumers would want to do with an under-the-telly box. However, Panasonic has much to gain from promoting DVD-RAM: as the manufacturer of the technology, every box shipped with such a drive adds to its IP revenues.

Fortunately, Panasonic recognises that DVD-R is a more efficient way of capturing movies to disc (roughly twice as fast using these devices), and the media is cheaper too, although DVD-R discs can only be written to once.

The players also have a DV port so you can transfer data from a camcorder and another through which you can connect to the Internet to access an Electronic Program Guide to find and record shows. This can also be accessed by a mobile phone and your player scheduled to record programs remotely.

The DMR-E100H will be available worldwide in the autumn. Prices for the UK have not yet been set.