Panasonic has announced the world first Blu-ray Disc (BD) recorders that can play back regular BD Video (movie) discs. Why the proviso? Well, Sony’s actually been selling a non-compatible BD recorder for years in Japan. So Panasonic’s new BD recorders are something of a new breed. The new models are the Panasonic DIGA DMR-BW200 (with 500GB internal HDD) and the DMR-BR100 (200GB HDD). Both can record HD on BD-RE rewritable discs and dub from the built-in hard-disk drive (HDD) to BD discs. These devices support many formats, too. “The DMR-BW200 and DMR-BR100 support a variety of media including HDD, BD-RE, BD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-R DL and DVD-RW for recording, and HDD, BD-RE, BD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, +R, DVD-R DL, +R DL, DVD-RW, +RW, DVD-Video, BD-Video, music CD, CD-R and CD-RW for playback.”

Bad news, though. They will be available November 15th in Japan. (No price was mentioned.)

Doh!

Panasonic DMR-BW200 and DMR-BR100 Blu-ray Disc Recorders Announced