Hitachi Launches the 1TB DVD Recorder

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Hitachi has set a new record on Wednesday by announcing the first 1TB drive/DVD recorder, enough to record about 128 hours of high-definition digital broadcasting. This amazing capacity is achieved with two 500GB hard-drives.

Another key feature of the new models of recorders, with capacities of 160GB, 250Gb and 500GB, is the ability to simultaneously record two high-definition programs.

The recorders will be available in Japan starting from next month, with prices ranging from 130,000 yen to 230,000 yen for the one-terabyte recorder, which stores data on two 500 gigabyte hard disk drives.

According to Reuters, the major players on the DVD recorder market are: Matsushita, Sony, Toshiba and Sharp, Hitachi being a newcomer.

"We entered the market last year and have only been able to grab about 3 percent of the market. It's been hard to earn a decent return on investment with such (low) volumes," Norio Ogimoto, general manager of Hitachi's storage media group, told a news conference.

Hitachi said it did not have concrete plans for launching the products in overseas markets, explaining that consumers in Europe and the United States were not as keen on high-end recorders.