Following the victory by Blu-ray in the high definition content war we have seen a slew of new Blu ray products to hit the market during the past 6 months. One of them is the Panasonic DMR-BW500 which is the first 500GB dual tuner Blu-ray recorder in the world outside of Japan.
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In reviewing this product, I have taken a look at what alternatives there are to this product because at $2,199 this is one expensive beast particularly as the 25GB rewritable discs are $119 for a pack of three and in digesting this cost remember that the cost of an external 1TB hard drive which is 1,000 gigabytes can now be purchased for less than $500.
There is one thing that I will agree on and that is that Blu-ray is the ultimate in content quality but having said that it is very hard to pick the difference between a 1080i HD recording to a hard drive and one recorded to an expensive Blu-ray recorder similar to the BW-500.
The core features of this Blu-ray player are dual TV tuners that allow you to record two programs at one, a 500GB hard drive that delivers around 72 hours of HD recording and the ability to record directly to a Blu-ray 25GB removable disc.
It also has the ability to pause live TV at the push of a button and replay within 30 minutes.
The seven-day electronic program guide (EPG) is pretty ordinary as it is the one broadcast by the TV networks. However, it does have an ability to capture captures which is excellent if you want to run the TV without sound.
