Unfortunately, there are currently no plans to sell the new Blu-ray units outside of Japan.
Why does everything good get announced in Japan? Thanks to the magic of the web, we learned that Panasonic is planning to launch three new Blu-ray recorders next month.
Before you roll your eyes at another pricey video box, PC World says that these products will be able to pack 18 hours of HD video onto a 50GB Blu-ray disc. That’s a new one!
We also like that each one has a whopping hard drive, most notably the DMR-BW900’s 1TB of storage. That’s a whole lot of “Bionic Woman”—anywhere from 160 to 381 hours, depending on the recording mode.
The two other models were the 500GB DMR-BW800 and the DMR-BW700, which features 250GB of storage space.
Expect the DMR-BW900 to cost about $2,600—assuming it ever goes on sale in the U.S. Each of the models will go on sale in Japan on November 1.
It’s hard to believe an obviously “hot” product will not be sold in the US - at least for a while.
So the real question might be fathomed by “following the money.”
Perhaps the US market does not have enough technical savvy for such a unit and prefers to pay $10 a month for a cable DVR.
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Sadly, a lot of hot products don’t make it here. I just can’t imagine why these wouldn’t be an exception. Why make different ones for the U.S.?