Pioneer is introducing to the Japanese market a couple HDD/DVRs with HDTV support. They can record HD directly to the HDD, and it allows burning of HDTV material to DVD, but I think they downrez it first, the press release is a little ambiguous. It says “It allows users to move high-definition digital video recorded in the HDD to a disc at a higher picture quality than before.” Hmmm.

The player has an HDMI output and scales 480i video to 720p or 1080i, if so desired. Previous Pioneer players have allowed 480i passthrough on the HDMI output, no mentioned is made here of this feature. (It’s a feature that could be useful if you have a better outboard scaler than the one in the player.)

Pioneer Intros High-end HDD/DVRs