Cashing on the Olympic craze, Panasonic releases DMR-BW500 Blu-Ray Disc Recorder

Olympic Games is going to be the biggest excuse for game lovers to buy latest model TV and a host of other gadgets. Thinking about the Olympic Games, famous Japanese Electronics brand, Panasonic, has launched Panasonic DMR-BW500, the stand-alone Blu-Ray Disc Recorder. It is the first stand-alone Blu-Ray Disc Recorder to be launched outside Japan. Last month, the product has been launched in Australia. There it would cost around AU$2,199, or more than £1,000.

Here are some of the major features of this nice piece of gadget:

• The Panasonic DMR-BW500 can record upto 72 hours.
• The Panasonic DMR-BW500 comes with a built in 500GB Hard Disk Drive (HDD).
• The Panasonic DMR-BW500 can record 5.1-channel Dolby Digital surround sound broadcasts.
• In the Panasonic DMR-BW500, you can play Blu-ray movies at 24 frames per second.
• The Panasonic DMR-BW500 comes with a twin DVB-T High Definition (HD) tuner.
• The Panasonic DMR-BW500 comes with a remote control. gizmag says:

Panasonic's intelligent VIERA Link offers single-remote control of Panasonic AV devices via HDMI and streamlining operation with features such as Pause Live TV, Direct TV Record and Auto Preset Download. The unit also features HDMI V.1.3, Deep Colour, DVB-T adaptive noise reduction, silence technology, 1080p Up-Conversion with HDMI and 7.1-channel surround sound of BD movies. It also supports the 'Bonus View' (formerly Final Standard Profile) Blu-ray standard and bitstream output of Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS-HD Master Audio and on-board decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS.

• One of the major weaknesses of the Panasonic DMR-BW500 is that it does not have any Ethernet port.
• The Panasonic DMR-BW500 comes with a SD card slot.gizmag says:

The Blu-ray Recorder's SD Card slot lets users with a Full High Definition SD (Secure Digital) Memory Card camcorder simply insert the SD card to play AVCHD home movies and then record to Blu-ray Disc, HDD or DVD without a PC. The SD Card slot can also play still JPEG images as a slide show on a TV while the USB terminal allows playback or archiving of JPEG and MP3 files directly from a USB storage device. Fast dubbing allows the unit to transfer a one-hour recording from the HDD to a Blu-ray Disc in as little as 15 minutes and backwards compatibility with DVDs and CDs as well as supporting recording and playback of BD-R/-R DL, BD-RE/-RE DL, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, +R, +R DL and -RW discs means just about all bases are covered in the compatibility stakes.

Related articles:
PC World

Gizmag

HDTVUK

Web Price