Sony Debuts Four Blu-ray Recorders in Japan

Sony is firing another salvo in its war with HD DVD, announcing four new Blu-ray recorder will land in the Japanese market this November.

Sony Electronics has announced plans to debut four new Bravia Blu-ray video recorders (Japanese) in Japan November 8, as the company continues to battle for dominance in the high-definition video disc format war. Sony’s new Blu-ray recorders will be able to record up to 16 hours of video to a 50 GB, dual layer Blu-ray disc.

The new models—the T50, T70, L70, and X90—sport 250, 320, or 500 GB hard drives, 1080/24p and lossless HD audio output, and all but the T50 offer dual digital tuners and an analog tuner with the ability to record two shows at once. The high-end X90 supports Deep Color and the X90 and L70 both support the "Sony Room Link" (Japanese) DLNA-based function for streaming content around a home network. The X90 will carry a suggested price of ¥200,000 (about $1,750 USD), which is roughly on par with Toshiba’s high-end HD DVD recorder.

At a news conference, Sony’s Katsumi Ihara said the company is considering releasing the new Blu-ray recorders in Europe, but no launch dates have been set. The company currently does not have plans to offer the Blu-ray recorders to the North American market.