Sharp's AQUOS BD-HDW20 Blu-ray recorder with 1TB disk: zero-to-numb in just 0.8 seconds

TV junkies rejoice, Sharp just announced their new 1TB, Blu-ray recording slickster. The ¥300,000 (about $2,611) AQUOS BD-HDW20 ships December 1st packing a 127-hour slab of silicon heroin to sooth your full HD television jones. Sharp's high-ender brings gold-plated HDMI output supporting 1080/24p video and DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD HRA, and high-def bitstream audio. We're also looking at IrSS infrared, 2x Firewire, recordings to 50GB dual-layer BD-RE/-R discs, and a lickity quick TV recording fix in just under a second. A 500GB model BD-HDW15 is also available for a bit less but really, why would you?

[Via Impress]

[Kragmose @ Sep 26th 2007 3:54AM]

Awesome, think I'm gonna start saving up right away.

[TeddyN @ Sep 26th 2007 4:04AM]

That's really really cool... I wish someone would buy me one :p

I probably wouldn't buy one myself though... The fact that Blu-Ray is region encoded is a real deal breaker for me. The laptop I'm on right now has a BluRay drive; I bought it in the U.S. Right now though, I'm in the U.K. but can't buy any BluRay movies because they're all region locked to zone B or whatever. I would feel cheated if I spent 2 and a half grand on something but still not have the flexibility to buy my discs wherever I want.

Other than that, this thing looks absolutely delicious, and I'm sure that the programs you'd burn onto bluray would be region free. 1 TB of storage is also totally awesome. Nevertheless... doesn't a blank dual layer bluray disc cost about as much as just buying a movie from the store? Which I suppose means that you'd have to be selective about what you burn, so that you don't waste your expensive blank disc on something you could just buy in a store.

[indigo80 @ Sep 26th 2007 4:49AM]

@TeddyN, playusa and ebay do a good line in import blu-rays and they're cheaper than the ~£30 average it seems that uk stores try to flog region B for

[shawnmos @ Sep 26th 2007 4:27AM]

Will this even work in the US? I thought you needed a cable card.

[allston232 @ Sep 26th 2007 4:44AM]

save your money and build your own sff htpc w/ a blu-ray drive & decent graphic card for less than $800. and yeah, you can use it for other purposes such as writing presentations, playing games, ... computing.

[Tensor @ Oct 2nd 2007 3:34PM]

Also applies for ztiger93:

Blue ray burner, Hdcp Video Card, 1Tb Storage, Digital HD tuner (cablecard? does this have cable card?) enough proc and memory to play blue ray movie while recording something at 720p, Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate (for HDCP support, and media centre) for under $2000 ?
Let alone under 800?? please where ?!!

Not to mention almost instant-on recordings.

Dont get me wrong, i have built an HTPC for me, when my XBMC was not up to playing back HD content and i Love it.

Seriously, price is high, but not ridiculous high.

[Ed Gillett @ Sep 26th 2007 4:51AM]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does gold plating an HDMI connection make a blind bit of difference? It's digital. The 0's and 1's either get through, or they don't. Not like analogue where this may have been beneficial to improve quality of connection. Yet more bling to confuse consumers not in the know "oooh - gold shiny. Must be way better than silver shiny ... will pay more ..." :|

[CB @ Sep 26th 2007 7:11AM]

Well you would think that, but i'll give us all a short lesson in digital transmission over cables as I'm a telecom engineer.
As you send a '1' pulse down a cable it charges up , much the same as a capacitor and then slowly release this voltage as it changes to a '0', this all means your lovely square wave ends up as all notchy and droopy, there are many ways that the recieving and sending equipment cope with this, by inverting a string of '1's for instance or they'll charge up the cable too much.
Dirty contacts can make the problem worse by introducing another component effect, the error correcting circuitry copes with it all, but the more you make it work the more the equipment is guessing.
It's miniscule and the capacitor effect only really troubles lengthy Telco cables.

[daveyd @ Sep 26th 2007 5:07AM]

errr TeddyN, not all BD releases are region coded, in fact most appear to be region free. HDDVD FUD dictates all BD are region coded, but it has advantages, New Line are releasing BD movies 6 months ahead of HDDVD due to region coding.

[ztiger93 @ Sep 26th 2007 9:17AM]

Would love to have it, don't get me wrong. But, someone tell me why this costs 10 times what I paid for the standard-def HDD/DVD+R recorder (Philips) that I have now? And don't say early adopters, because it's the same concept that's been around for years but with hi-def capability. Since the standard-def machines didn't catch on, which I don't understand since mine is mighty handy, why would they price this so insanely high?

Can buy a mighty nice off-the-rack media center PC network for this much money and have stronger editing capabilities, not to mention the ability to access recorded programming from multiple rooms. Or like someone else said, build your own for a third the price.

Sharp's machine looks great. That price is a joke. Get it under $500 and I'll think about it.

[Mii @ Sep 26th 2007 7:56PM]

Actually, a big part of the price is the cost of those laser diodes. Now consider the track pitch is .32um, so the mechanicals have to be 2 times as precise, and the mechanism isn't used for anything else that sells in quantity. It has firewire input, so it can probably record from your SD/HD DV camcorders, so it needs an encoder that can presumably handle real time HD encoding. The drive is probably rated for continuous operation (consider the price difference between the enterprise 750gb Seagate and the Retail Consumer model as a reference). That and you know those MSRPs are always inflated. I mean look at a Tivo Series 3, $599/smaller drive/no burner and they still can't make any money off it unless you pay for the service, and that barely keeps them out of bankruptcy despite its popularity.

[engadget @ Sep 27th 2007 1:40PM]

Add a dual format hd-dvd reader and we'll be set