JVC Unveils First Blu-Ray/HDD Combo Recorders

JVC Professional Products just launched its new SR-HD1500 and SR-HD1250 Blu-ray disc and HDD recorders. These are the first standalone Blu-ray recorders available in the United States, and feature a built-in hard disk drive for easy duplication and disc authoring without a PC.

With the SR-HD1500 and SR-HD1250, users can record and author professional BDMV (with menu) or BDAV discs. Advanced MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (H.264) encoding provides support for HD and SD sources, and a built-in format converter can downconvert HD content for recording to a standard DVD. The units support BD-R or BD-RE (erasable) Blu-ray discs.

The SR-HD1500 features a 500 GB hard drive, plus an RS-232C terminal and support for .MOV files (for Apple Final Cut Pro), which makes it compatible with footage recorded with JVC GY-HM100 and GY-HM700 ProHD camcorders in the SP (19/25 Mbps) mode. The SR-HD1250 has a 250 GB hard drive, but does not include RS-232C connectivity or .MOV support. Both models include component and HDMI outputs. Inputs include USB and i.Link (IEEE-1394) ports, an SDHC card slot, and composite and S-video inputs.

The SR-HD1500 has an MSRP of $2,550 and the SR-HD1250 has an MSRP of $1,995. The combo decks will be available in October 2009.