921 firewire to HD tape recorder??

[Bill D]

I called Marantz tech support because of a problem with my AV receiver, somehow I mentioned the 721, the guy said he never heard of that one, but he owned a 508 and heard about the 921. He said that Marantz will have a HD video recorder (tape based) that will interface with the firewire on a 921..
Thought that sounded kind of cool, except the recorder is about $1500..

[Kagato]

It's a rebadged JVC. You can buy the JVC D-VHS for $499-$599 at your local discount electronics chain.

[Eyedox]

Rumor that Mitsubishi discontinued their D-VHS VCRs (1100 and 2000 models) and are designing one with D-THEATRE since everyone complained that it could not read prerecorded movie studio movies encoded with JVC's new encryption technology. Marantz also had licensed D-Theatre and I think Mitsubishi felt a little left out. Now if JVC would only put a damn firewire port on their stupid HDTV sets instead of JUST a DVI, life would be good.

[Ken_F]

Eyedox,

It was recently confirmed over on AVS that Mitsubishi was not discontining their HDTV D-VHS VCRs. Mitsubishi has not supported D-Theater, because that D-Theater licensing requires them to support copy protection, more specifically a flag to disable full resolution HDTV through the analog output.

[Ken_F]

I would be wary of purchasing any HDTV D-VHS based on the JVC 30k model, as this is known to exhibit significant reliability issues.

If you want a HDTV D-VHS right now, you would be better to go with a model from Mitsubishi. If you want D-Theater capability to playback prerecorded HDTV D-VHS tapes, then you would do best to wait for the JVC 40k model coming this summer.

[Kagato]

I bought the 30K with a ext warranty from the retailer. I really don't care if my 30K starts going flaky, if it breaks 3 times I get whatever new model is out at the time.

What's with the flag though? I don't recall 5C having a down res flag, like HDCP over DVI.

[Mike Russell]

The 921 has already gotten expensive. While waiting for it and starving for HD I bought a mits 1100 and 3 D-THEATER movies only to learn it wouldn't play them. Well my local CC had a JVC 30K for 429.00 no interest for one year so I bought it. I got the mits for 379.00, 21 months no interest. Now I can record Jay Leno on 2 DVCR'S since thats all we get around here in HD. They were both good buys I thought but I need to return one of them.They both work great, maybe I should keep them and get a 211 also. If I had only been born rich or atleast not so crazy.

[Ken_F]

Kagato,

5C doesn't have a "downrez" flag, but D-Theater encryption and licensing is completely different from 5C. D-Theater licensing terms require that playback devices support "down rezzing" of analog output to 480p, or no analog output at all, when a certain D-Theater flag is set. No D-Theater tapes currently make use this flag, but it is there for use by new releases if piracy over analog becomes a problem.

The problem with the 30k is that JVC doesn't seem to know how to fix the problem (or maybe it can't be fixed?). So if your unit is covered under their warranty, you ship it off to them, and you spend months waiting to get it back.

[Bill D]

Originally posted by Kagato
It's a rebadged JVC. You can buy the JVC D-VHS for $499-$599 at your local discount electronics chain.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this unit doesn't do HD..??

[Ken_F]

Bill,

The JVC 30k is a D-VHS HDTV recorder; it will record HDTV from a Firewire source. It will also play back pre-recorded D-Theater HDTV tapes. Because of various reliability issues, the price on this unit has dropped from its original $1000+ down to $500-$600.

A new model, the 40k, is expected to replace it this summer.

[lastmanstanding]

Anthing in the wind about Firewire recording to a DVD recorder, or to a computer?

It will be so nice when they finally hammer out the next generation of interconnects.

[Ken_F]

lastman,

The CE vendors are not going to license 5C to PC vendors, as that would infuriate content providers. For non protected HDTV material, you can already save it to your PC (with Firewire) and publicly available software. As for DVD recorders, yes; in a few years, I suspect we'll have consumer blu-ray HD-DVD recorders with Firewire to record HDTV. Standard DVD recorders don't have the capacity for HDTV MPEG-2 storage.

Sony recently unveiled a blu-ray HD-DVD recorder, but it really only intended to be used with studio sources, plus HDTV from the Japanese BS satellite service.