Panasonic launches three new HD recorders

Posted by Al Warmington on Tue 30 Jun 2009

freesat+, meet Blu-ray

Panasonic’s range of three new HD recorders has hit the shelves in the UK. The DMR-BS850, DMR-BS-750 and DMR-XS350 are available now, promising one of the most comprehensive means of storing media on your set top box that we’ve seen since all the games consoles suddenly decided gaming alone wasn’t quite good enough.

Starting with the flagship DMR-BS850, you’ll find a Blu-ray disc recorder on board along with a 500GB HDD. Twin freesat+ tuners enable you to record two channels at the same time, and you can transfer those recordings to Blu-ray using H.264 encoding, which enables you to store up to 24 hours of high definition content per disc.

Next in the range is the DMR-BS750, which offers almost all the same spec – the only difference is a 250GB HDD. You get Panny’s high quality image processing tech, including PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus, and the superior surround sound of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-Master Audio Essential.

On the bottom rung, there’s the DMR-XS350. This recorder drops Blu-ray for old school DVD, although it will still play and record HD media from freesat+ just like the others. The hard drive is also a 250GB model, so this might be the preferred choice if you’ve already splashed out on a fancy Blu-ray player.

All three recorders can store footage from HD camcorders, save images taken from LUMIX digital cameras and even record music to the hard drive. Each model has gracenote on board, so the players with automatically name your tracks for you when you rip the music to them. Panasonic calls all this 'HD Everything' and is pimping it and the HD recorders on a new flashtastic website - check it out here.

The DMR-BS850, DMR-BS750 and DMR-XS350 are in shops now and cost £1,000, £900 and £750. Expect the DMR-750s to be subject to the first discounts as people inevitably realise that spending £100 more nets them double the amount of storage space. You’d be foolish not to.

Link: Panasonic