Pioneer Readies Blu-ray Recorders Overseas

Pioneer Corp reported today that it is releasing set-top Blu-ray DVD recorders by the end of the year. The company is developing the Blu-ray recorders with help from Sharp Corp who owns 14 percent of Pioneer and already offers Blu-ray recorders in Japan.

The company will similarly begin selling the BD recorders in Japan before the year-end shopping season, and then begin to release models overseas. The selling price and volume target have yet to be set, but Blu-ray recorder demand in Japan seems to be taking off. According to analysts from Fuji Chimera Research Institute, demand is likely to jump 18 fold to 3.6 million units by 2012.

Pioneer had been shipping its BDR-101A Blu-ray recorder for the PC since 2006, so it's no stranger to BD recorders, however the set-top models are considerably different.

The Sharp AQUOS BD-R model features a 1TB drive and costs around $2,600. It supports 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 Simple Shot, a new high-speed infrared link designed to allow camera phones, etc, to transfer pictures directly), dual IEEE 1394, and 50GB dual-layer BD-RE/-R disc support. A 500GB model is also available.

What will be interesting is to see if this new technology will incorporate (now or eventually) the new 400GB BD disc capacity Pioneer has been reporting of late.