Sony's Got Some New Blu-ray Goodies

Digital TV recorders have marked the death sentence of old VCRs, as they are capable of carrying out pretty much the same functions (namely, scheduled TV recording and playback), but at a much grander scale. And in an attempt to enlarge even more its customer base, Sony has just announced the release of 4 new such devices, which, besides the relatively large amounts of storage space, provide yet another interesting feature: they've been fitted with Blu-ray recorders, thus allowing users to burn their favorite TV programs onto the Sony's next-generation optical discs.

All the four new models, namely the high-end BDZ-X90, mid-range BDZ-L70 and BDZ-T70 and finally, the entry-level BDZ-T50, have been fitted with AVC/H.264 encoders, thus making them compatible with AVCHD cameras as well, a very important element for the future, when said cameras will probably become a lot more popular than they are nowadays. Moreover, in order to make them even more appealing for the customers, the company has also thrown in some pretty large HDDs, ranging from 250 GB in the entry-level model and up to 500 GB in the BDZ-X90.

And since we're on the subject of the BDZ-X90, it's worth mentioning the fact that this model has been fitted with two analog TV tuners and supports recording in 1080p60, not to mention 24 frames playback via HDMI (which, by the way, is gold-plated), as well as support of x.v.color, for a true cinema-like experience. Moreover, it can record on both BD-R/RE and DVD-RW and is compatible with either the MPEG-2 codec (in DR mode) or with the AVC codec (in XR/XSR/SR/LSR/LR/ER modes).

The rest of the models lose some of the aforementioned goodies, but also shave off some Yens (around 20,000) or dollars (around $175) per model from the price tag. Thus, the L70 has got only 320 GB of recording space, with no 1080p60, the T70's got HDMI, but no gold in there, while the entry-level T50 doesn't even have digital tuners.

Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, these models will be available for now (actually, from November 8th) solely in Japan, starting at $1,228 for the T50 and going up to $1,775 for the high-end X90 model.

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