New Chips allow HDTV recording to DVD

Toshiba Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic) demonstrated recorders at the Ceatec exhibition in Japan, capable of recording high-definition TV to conventional DVDs.

Previously high-definition TV could only be recorded to Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, as conventional DVDs had insufficient capacity to hold an HD movie in the MPEG2 format which is used for HDTV broadcasting.

A conventional DVD holds just 4.7G-bytes of data per layer, while an HD DVD disc can hold 15G bytes and a Blu-ray Disc 25G bytes.

Now, however, chips have become available which can transcode an off-the-air MPEG2 signal in real time into the MPEG4 AVC format, which is more efficient.

These chips have been integrated into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players, substantially increasing their storage capacity.

With the new chip, some machines from Sony Corp. can store around 8 hours of HDTV on a single-sided Blu-ray Disc using MPEG4 AVC, four times more than was possible with MPEG2.

However, the new chip also makes it possible to store about 2 hours of HDTV on a conventional DVD.

With HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players still pretty pricy, this development could mean significant cost-savings for consumers, as it could allow manufacturers to make cheaper, DVD-only recorders.

At the moment though, only Toshiba is considering this route, with other companies still promoting the new, more expensive recorders.

Panasonic is promoting dual capability recorders - to give consumers the option of using Blu-ray for recording they wish to preserve and conventional DVD for other recordings.

The development could make the format question even more complicated. There is no standard format for the enhanced conventional DVD, so Toshiba’s HD REC and Panasonic’s AVCREC formats are incompatible.

HD Rec, which records at 4M bps, is a DVD Forum standard - the group responsible for DVD and the new HD DVD formats - while AVCREC, which records at 5.7M bps, comes from the Blu-ray Disc Association.