Sharp to sell seven Blu-ray recorder models

[WriteSimply]

From Taipei Times, quoting Bloomberg.

Originally Posted by Taipei Times

BLOOMBERG
Thursday, Sep 27, 2007, Page 10

An employee for Japanese electronics giant Sharp displays the company's new Aquos Blu-ray BD-AV10 disc recorder in Tokyo yesterday. The recorder can record and play two-layer 50GB discs and record a maximum of six hours of high-definition images.

Sharp Corp, a member of Sony Corp's Blu-ray digital disc group, will sell seven recorder models in Japan beginning on Oct. 27 to take market share from Toshiba Corp's rival high-definition DVD (HD DVD) standard.

Sharp will initially produce a monthly output of 30,000 of the Blu-ray recorders, which will be priced between ¥100,000 (US$871) and ¥120,000, the Osaka-based company said yesterday.

Another two models with hard-disk storage, priced at ¥200,000 and ¥300,000, will be sold beginning on Dec. 1.

The recorders will extend the accessibility of Blu-ray, which rivals HD DVD as the next home entertainment standard, after Sony this month said it would sell four models beginning on Nov. 8. The new models may also help Sharp meet a forecast 33 percent gain in digital disc player and recorder sales to ¥60 billion this fiscal year.

"We see huge potential for these models as about 80 percent of people are still using older, analog-type recorders," Masafumi Matsumoto, a senior executive vice president at Sharp, said at a briefing in Tokyo.

All Sharp recorders will be Blu-ray compatible by 2011, Matsumoto said.

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