Things are seriously starting to ramp up in the UK and hopefully it won't be long before the sort of hardware available in Japan comes over here.
Take Panasonic's announcement that it's to launch a Freesat+ PVR with built-in Blu-ray recorder. That's a pretty meaty piece of kit, ensuring that most of your home entertainment needs are met in just one box.
According to various reports coming out from Panasonic's recent European press conference, it will feature twin tuner and 500GB hard drive (both essential for Freesat+ functionality) plus a Blu-ray writer.
The likelihood is that this will be crippled in some way to stop you from copying Blu-ray discs or from archiving lots of high definition telly onto disc. It'll probably be aimed at those with high definition camcorders wanting to archive their own material onto Blu-ray. Time will tell.
There'll also be Ethernet, which you'd pretty much expect as standard on both Blu-ray and Freesat boxes now. Hopefully this means that the Blu-ray player has full BD Live functions. It really should this far into the game.
There'll also be a 250GB version with just a standard DVD player. I can't see this being particularly useful to anyone, as if you've got a Blu-ray player already then you can play back ordinary DVDs and you may as well just buy a standalone Freesat box.
More details closer to launch date, which should be May time. Model numbers DMR-BS850 (Blu-ray) and DMR-BS750 (DVD).
(Via JoinFreesat.co.uk)
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