World's First HD DVD/HDD Recorder Toshiba RD-A1 Arriving in Japan July 27

[June 22, 2006] Originally posted
[July 13, 2006] Availability date postponed from July 14 to July 27 due possibly to production delays. Details (in Japanese) here.

Toshiba Corp. has announced that it would launch the next-generation, high-definition optical disk recorder based on the HD DVD format (under the "VARDIA" product line) on July 27 in Japan.

Toshiba expects the world's first HD DVD recorder, equipped with hard disk drive (1TB HDD), to sell for 398,000 yen. It can also record on DVD-R/RW/RAM. Recording on both DVD-R DL & HD DVD-R DL blank media is also supported. Video recording will be done using MPEG-2, playback and recording in MPEG4 AVC and VC1 is not available for HD-DVD-R.

At approximately 17Mbps MPEG-2 (TS mode), both the HD DVD-R 15GB and HD DVD-R DL 30GB can record up to approximately 115 minutes and 230 minutes worth of HD video respectively.

The piece of news I believe many HD DVD adopters will like to hear that 1080p over HDMI is supported with this machine. Also, it includes a 14bit/297MHz video DAC and 192kHz/24-bit audio DAC. This recorder can also output upscaled image from DVD sources at 1080p resolution over HDMI.

Before I forget to mention this in the midst of all these features/specification announcements, all the features that is currently enjoyed on HD-A1, HD-D1 and HD-XA1 will also be included with this recorder.

Power consumption stands at 133W. The size of it is 457×408×159mm (width × depth × height) and weighs 15.2kg.

Input Ports:
1 x S-Video
3 x Composite
3 x Analog audio
1 x D1
1 x DV Input

Output Ports:
1 x HDMI
2 x i.Link S400
1 x D4
1 x Component
3 x S-Video
3 x Composite
1 x 5.1-channel analog audio
3 x 2-channel analog audio
1 x Coaxial Digital
1 x Optical Digital (Toslink)

The LAN and USB ports found on the HD-A1, HD-D1 and HD-XA1 are also included for this recorder.

Want to see the Toshiba RD-A1 in motion? Check out a small clip on this, courtesy of AV Watch (Japanese website), here.

Full press release with all the product details and specs direct from Toshiba Corp. can be viewed here (Japanese) and here (English).

In the meantime, let's bring out more of the pictures... and if you are excited and want further updated official details (in Japanese) visit Toshiba's RD-A1 product page by clicking here.

Click on the below image of the product's rear to have the clear view of all the I/O options included