Toshiba's first RD series hard drive-only DVR Audio/Video / Toshiba Posted by zmcnulty on Feb 16, 2005 - 11:14 PM |
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Available in a 250GB capacity, and that's basically it. Interestingly enough, it's fairly cheap -- estimated at less than 35,000 yen. The biggest feature of the player, "Net de Dubbing," allows for users to losslessly copy video to other R series recorders on the same network. Legal? I guess, because you apparently copy copy-protected video. Tosbhia Corporation will release the "RD-H1," the first hard drive-only unit in the "RD series" of recorders, in early April. The capacity is 250GB. It will be sold only on the company's direct sale website, "Shop1048." (Translator's note: those numbers can be read "Toshiba" in Japanese) Preorders will begin in early March, and though the price is yet to be announced, it looks to be around 30-35,000 yen. It is because the recorder will not be sold at any storefronts "that we were able to make the low price possible by using net-only sales." Furthermore, this is Shop1048's first exclusive product. This also serves for some test marketing, and Shop1048 has said that "we're planning on 1000 units per month, but we can increase production at any time to react." The RD-H1 is a video recorder with a 250GB hard drive. Its development codename is "Strike." While this is the first hard drive-only unit for the RD series, Mr. Hideo Kataoka, Secretary of the company's Digital AV department's DAV merchandise division, had this to say: "Since we introduced the industry's first product in the HD & DVD category, it's not like the hard drive is included as some bonus to the DVD recorder -- more like, a DVD drive is included with a HD recorder for backup purposes. Keeping with this, we included the 'Net de Dubbing' feature in the RD-XS53 in advance. This isn't something we just pulled out of our ass." Toshiba intends the unit to be aimed at "people who want another hard drive for their RD," and "women who only used VHS's time shift." "If you fill up a RD with support for Net de Dubbing...you've left behind...your dreams of the future," the company explained. A single terrestrial analog tuner is provided. It has no ghost reduction function, no BS analog tuner, and no cooperation with SkyPerfecTV! Basic software operation takes after the RD-X5, besides of course those functions revolving around the usage of the DVD drive. "WEPG," which combines both "iNET" EPG connection by ethernet and "ADAMS" terrestrial analog EPG, provides EPG service. Furthermore, it does not have any broadcast extension functionality such as the "Baseball Game Extension" offered by the "RD-XV34/44." Available functions include "Net de Navi," allowing for operation from a PC by LAN, "Net de Monitor," allowing for playback of recorded programs on the PC by usage of Ethernet, and mail setting functionality. Also available are functions that have been common to all RD series units, such as 1.5x fast-forward/rewind, folder functions, and so on. The biggest feature of the RD-H1 is the inclusion of "Net de Dubbing" functionality. With this, although the unit is a simply HD recorder, it can be connected with other RD series recorders on the same network that support Net de Dubbing -- this allows for lossless dubbing of programs recorded on the RD-H1 to other devices. The "dubbee" can not only be the hard drives of the RD units, but their DVD drives -- so it can be used like a hybrid recorder. Additionally, other RD-H1s can be set to be dubbed to; so users can temporarily move certain contents to other units. The unit does not support dubbing of copy protected programs. "Not only are we aiming this at existing RD users as a new hard drive, but also to women who don't really record things." Input jacks include S-Video, composite, and two analog audio jacks, while availabe output ports include D2 video, optical digital audio, S-video, composite, and analog audio. It also has a LAN port. The external dimensions are 430 x 336 x 58mm (W x D x H), and it weighs about 3.9kg.  Inspired by: http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050216/toshiba1.htm [1] Product Information: http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/hdd-dvd/products/hddrec/index.html [2] |
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This article is from TechJapan http://www.techjapan.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.techjapan.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=890 Links in this article [1] http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050216/toshiba1.htm [2] http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/hdd-dvd/products/hddrec/index.html |