Panasonic's DMR-XW300 DVD recorder - why you're better off with Blu-Ray
A few years ago Adam Turner would have crawled over broken glass for an off-the-shelf HDD/DVD recorder with HDTV tuners, but now it's just a stop-gap solution.
For a long time, cramming HDTV tuners into a HDD/DVD recorder was the holy grail of home entertainment - something which could only be attained by building a computer-based home entertainment system. Buying an off-the-shelf recorder meant choosing between watching HD or recording to DVD.
I certainly wouldn't inflict a computer-based media centre on my non-tech-savvy friends and relatives, so when they would approach me for buying advice I'd carefully explain that they needed to choose between HDTV and DVD recording.
We'd go through the pros and cons of each so they didn't get any nasty surprises when they fired up their new recorder. More often than not they'd opt for a standard-def HDD/DVD recorder, such as Panasonic's DMR-EX75.
As Australia's television networks slowly ramped up their HD content, I was worried they might be making the wrong decision - but at least they were making an informed decision.
I'd come to the conclusion that we'd never see HDTV tuners and an optical burner in the one CE device until Blu-ray recorders hit the market, which would be ridiculously expensive at first. So if you spent $600ish on a standard-def HDD/DVD recorder today you'd get a few years out of it before you could replace it with a Blu-ray recorder for around the same price.
The arrival of Panasonic's $2199 DMR-BW500 HDD/Blu-ray recorder early this year seemed to confirm this, and the hefty price tag convinced me that I hadn't given people the wrong advice.
Then Panasonic unveiled its $1329 DMR-XW300 HDD/DVD recorder, with two HDTV tuners and a DVD burner under the bonnet. Where the hell was Panasonic a few years ago when we really needed something like this?
Will HD/DVD recorders be obsolete soon?
Now that Blu-ray has won the format war and Blu-ray recorders are hitting the shelves, a DVD recorder with HDTV tuners is a stop-gap solution to tide you over while Blu-ray prices fall.
In 12 months time you'll almost certainly be able to buy a HDD/Blu-ray recorder for around $1329, so why spend that much today on a HDD/DVD recorder that's already obsolete?
My advice - save your money for the Blu-Ray recorder
This is the product reviewers' dilemma, do you judge something on its merits alone or do you look at the big picture? If you'd struggle to find $1300 today to buy the DMR-XW300 HDD/DVD recorder, you should save your money and buy a Blu-ray recorder in a year or two for the same price.
If you've got $1300 today to drop on the DMR-XW300 HDD/DVD recorder, perhaps you should dig a little deeper and buy a Blu-ray recorder. Even then I'd recommend waiting for Blu-ray recorder prices to drop and for them to include advanced features such as BD-Live.
So who should buy Panasonic's DMR-XW300 HDD/DVD recorder? No one. Does that mean I should give it zero stars out of six? No. That would imply it's a piece of junk, which it's not.
It's just three years too late. If you want to buy the DMR-XW300 go right ahead, it's very good at what it does. Just don't complain when we see sub-$1000 Blu-ray recorders by Christmas 2009. At least you're making an informed decision.
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Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Comments: 1
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Peleus
Dec 14, 2008 10:42 AM
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I have to say - I disagree completely with what you're saying.
Firstly bluray recorders don't offer much over the standard recorder (for instance the DMR-XW300, which I will now refer to as "recorders") apart from the obvious bluray functionality. The advantage of this being you have an "all-in-one" unit, but in terms of function, being able to record on a bluray disc is fairly useless when you can achieve the same results recording onto the current crop of hard drives. Remember in this sense Bluray is simply a 25gb container for information (50gb DL), which is simply a smaller version of the 250gb+ hard drives out ready to be used now.
Yes of course bluray is the next big thing, however if we always held off our purchasing decisions for "the next big thing" we would never purchase anything. I don't see any significant functionality you're missing out on by purchasing a recoder now along with a bluray player, rather than waiting for the future. Your analogy is similar to saying you shouldn't buy a $100 DVD player and $100 VCR now because the $300 DVD/VCR Combo will be down to $200 in a years time.
Simply put, go out and buy what you want when you're ready, and worry about the next big thing when it comes along. |