Sony HDD-Toting DVD Recorders Aim For Under Your BRAVIA

Sony has announced three new combination DVD recorder and hard-drive PVRs, boasting direct digital copying from compatible camcorders, 1080p upscaling and a choice of analogue or digital TV tuners.  The RDR-HX1080 and RDR-HXD1090 both come with a 500GB hard-drive, enough for 1420 hours of recordings at the lowest quality level (or 73 hours at HQ+ maximum quality).  The HXD1090 and HXD1095 both have a DVB-T digital terrestrial tuner alongside their analogue tuner.

All three models have HDD Connection for Sony camcorders, which allows for direct digital dubbing from standard definition video cameras that use hard-drives for their storage.  Hooking up via USB, users can choose from full transfer – which copies everything on the camcorder's drive – or incremental, which merely copies whatever footage is new.  Music can also be saved on the hard-drive, and either played back through the TV or added as a soundtrack to recorded footage; the edited clip can then be burnt onto a DVD.

Sony's X-Pict Story function, meanwhile, is an onboard slideshow app, taking images from the drive and allowing you to organise them into presentations.  Music can be added as well as different transitions, and the results stored or burnt to a disk.  BRAVIA Sync compatibility means that the units can, when connected via HDMI, be controlled by a single Sony remote.  Obviously they can be used to record and time-shift live TV.

The company is yet to reveal pricing for the new models.