Toshiba is about to launch a one-terabyte HD DVD burner

The Japanese electronics maker will ship the first device capable of recording information in the new generation DVD format on July 14. Another noteworthy point is that the product will integrate a 1 TB hard drive, enough to accommodate 130 hours of HD content.

The Toshiba RD-A1 is also equipped with analog, satellite and analog digital (analog) channels. The device allows recording of single HD DVD-R (15 GB) and dual (30 GB) discs but will encode in MPEG 2 format, but not MPEG 4 AVC or VC1 still used for HD DVD standards. However, even with MPEG 2, HD DVD-R 15 GB disc can still store 2 hours of high-resolution content.

Toshiba introduced the world's first HD DVD recorder in Tokyo on June 22.Photo: AP

RD-A1 is designed with a lot of ports to support images and sound.Photo: Reg Hardware

This new product can also read all CD-R / RW, DVD burn once (recordable) and rewriteable, but can only burn DVD-R / RW / RAM.

Toshiba said the retail price of RD-A1 will be quite high, about $ 3,467. It also weighs 15.2 kg and measures 45.7 x 40.8 x 15.9 cm. The Japanese group hopes 100,000 products will soon be consumed by the end of this year.

HD DVD players have been on the market since March in Japan and April in the US, but the RD-A1 is the first version that can be burned under Toshiba's green laser technology. Meanwhile, Sony yesterday distributed products that support Blu-ray to retail outlets in the US and officially went on sale from June 25.