The new “Diga” line from Matsushita electronics is aimed squarely at cash rich early adopters.  They are expensive, extremely expensive, but they have some great technology on board.  The Unifier processor that Matsushita are making use of for the new BD recorders features the exciting 45 nanometer engineering.  Smaller parts equal more options, like the ability to do on the fly compression.  18 hours of video can jimmied into a 50GB Blu-ray disk (which is lucky when you consider the cost of the media).  4:1 compression is great for recording programs that you do not necessarily want to see in high definition.  4x reading and 2x writing make the disk drive on a par with the PC based drives that are on the market now.

The hard disk drives that are included in the new line make these players really exciting.  One does not have to think back too far to remember when HDD recorders had an average capacity of 60GB.  Not anymore, the bottom end of the pile is 250GB, with a 500GB and 1TB model taking storage capacity for audio visual components to new heights.  It all sounds great until you see the bank-busting price, because you cannot help but wonder if you would be better off building or buying a HTPC which would give you greater versatility, comparable performance and potentially more storage for a similar price.  It depends if you want a sleek and shiny gadget in your TV cabinet or not.

Price: DMR-BW900 - $2593 (1 TB) ,  DMR-BW800 - $1988 (500 GB), DMR-BW700 - $1566 (250 GB)

Source: Yahoo News Japan, Panasonic Japan

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