Sony said on Tuesday it will launch its Blu-ray high-definition optical disc recorders in Japan in December, in time for the peak of the year-end shopping season but about a month behind rival Panasonic.
Sony, whose strong brand image once allowed it to charge a hefty premium for its products, has been hit hard by a series of setbacks in recent months such as recalls of more than seven million Sony-made batteries by PC makers and a delay in the highly anticipated launch of its PlayStation 3 in Europe.
The Tokyo-based company, whose epoch-making Walkman music players have long lost their leading position to Apple's iPod, needs to ensure a smooth launch of the advanced recorders to help regain consumer confidence in its technological prowess.
"We consider the Blu-ray recorder a core product for people in the living room to enjoy high-definition broadcasting, high-definition photos and high-definition movies," Sony Senior Vice President Kiyoshi Nishitani told reporters.
Electronics companies such as Sony and Matsushita, the maker of Panasonic brand products, are promoting the Blu-ray format as the next-generation optical disc standard, while Toshiba is a leading proponent of the rival HD DVD technology.
Sony expects the BDZ-V9, a model with a 500-gigabyte (GB) hard disk drive, which will hit store shelves on December 8, to sell for 300,000 yen ($2,550), and the BDZ-V7, a version with a 250-GB hard drive to come with a price tag of 250,000 yen. The latter will go on sale on December 16.
Both recorders support recording of digital broadcastings to the HDD and single-layer BD-R/RE and of course, play-back of BD video. It also offers reproduction of AVCHD discs, DVD±R/RW/RAM and audio CDs. In addition, they can write on DVD-R/RW and DVD+R DL media.
The recorders are able to output linear PCM 2/6/8ch 48bit/96kHz as well as 2ch 192kHz audio.
An i.LINK interface can be used in order to connect the devices with an HDV and DV camera. In addition, the BDZ-V9 is able to output and upscale video at 1080p through an HDMI interface. The BDZ-V7 is able to output at 1080i.
Sony plans to manufacture a total of 10,000 units of the cutting-edge recorders per month in the initial stage.
In comparison, Matsushita will start selling two Blu-ray DVD recorders in Japan on November 15.
Osaka-based Matsushita has said a recorder able to store 200 gigabytes of data on its hard disk drive would sell for about 240,000 yen and a 500-gigabyte model which can store about 63 hours of terrestrial digital broadcasting for 300,000 yen.
In the United States and Europe, Sony intends to focus on Blu-ray players for the time being, and has no concrete plans to launch Blu-ray recorders, Nishitani said.
It plans to offer its Blu-ray player in the United States this autumn.
Nishitani expects 500 or more Blu-ray disc software titles to become available in a year, boosting the appeal of Blu-ray recorders and players to movie watchers.
Movie and music providers in the Blu-ray group said in August they would offer an initial batch of 75 software titles in Japan, including "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" from Walt Disney and Sony's "The Da Vinci Code."
They said many of the 75 titles will hit stores by the year-end.
Sony also announced the addition of Blu-ray Disc to more PCs in its Vaio line. The Vaio Type-R master is an Intel Core 2 Duo-based machine loaded with high-definition editing and authoring software (Ulead BD DiskRecorder for VAIO, WinDVD BD for VAIO, and Roxio Digital Media SE 7 (version for BD)).
The device is equipped with a Core 2 Duo T7400 (2.16GHz) and it is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GPU.
It will be available from October 28 at prices between230,000 and 50,000 yen depending on system configuration. A Blu-ray Disc drive will also be offered as a build-to-order option with Sony's Type-L computer.
With the new computers, Blu-ray Disc is now available in four of Sony's Vaio product lines.
In the competing HD DVD camp, Toshiba started rolling out its HD DVD players in Japan in March, becoming the first company to offer next-generation optical disc players.
Sony plans to launch PlayStation 3, which is equipped with a Blu-ray player, in November in Japan and North America, holding high hopes that potentially explosive demand for PS3 will give the Blu-ray camp a leg up over the competing format.
Sony sold almost a million units of PlayStation 2 in the first three days of its launch in Japan in 2000.
Microsoft, on the other hand, will launch an HD DVD player for its Xbox 360 game console on November 22 in Japan, stoking a format battle for next-generation optical disc technology in the video game industry.