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Gadgets Sony Unveils New AVCHD Burner
Nirav Sanghani (Blog) - June 2, 2007 11:37 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 18 comment(s) - last by EclipsedAurora.. on Jun 4 at 7:58 AM
Sony shows off its new AVCHD burner, compatible with select camcorders

Sony Electronics unveiled last Tuesday the VRD-MC5, a self-contained DVD burner that connects with select Sony AVCHD camcorders.   This is the first burner in their line of DVDirect models able to support the growing format.  Sony has already released seven AVCHD camcorders, but a computer and conversion software was necessary for converting videos to DVD for playback on home systems.

The VRD-MC5 offers USB, RCA analog, S-video, and Firewire inputs.  The burner will also work with standard definition camcorders. The VRD-MC5 records various formats including DVD, HDD, DV, and Digital8, connected by either RCA or Firewire.  The unit does not accept HDV input streams.  AVCHD camcorders can only be connected to the burner through the USB port.

The unit comes equipped with a 2.5" LCD, navigation controls, and a large burn button.  The burner allows for clips to be sorted and placed in a preferred order for burning on DVD+R/-R/+RW/-RW/+R DL discs.  It also works as a still photo burner with card slots for MemoryStick Duo/PRO Duo, SD/SDHC, xD, and compact flash.

The unit has no video output, so it cannot be used a home DVD player.  While the VRD-MC5 is able to transfer video to a full-size disc, the format is still AVCHD.  Because of this, the playback device must be compatible with AVCHD.

Most models recording to HDD and flash memory should be compatible, the PlayStation 3 and a few DVD players are compatible for playback.  No U.S. release has been set, but the unit will be available in Japan starting August 10. A retail price has not been set yet.

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???
By RMSistight on 6/2/2007 12:08:25 PM , Rating: 2
What is this? No love for HDV? What they should really do is allow me to stream directly from camcorder to PC while I'm recording. They do have a device like that but it's only for the professional camcorders and not the consumer HDR-HC7 models.




RE: ???
By Gul Westfale on 6/2/2007 12:22:03 PM , Rating: 2
i'm not sure but i think matrox makes several products that allow you to acquire video in real-time. matrox is usually very pricey though.


RE: ???
By GoodBytes on 6/2/2007 9:35:30 PM , Rating: 2
Matrox still exists? If they do, they kinds stop making video cards... no?
The last model I remember was the Matrox Millennium P750, with an amazing 64MB of RAM.


RE: ???
By StevoLincolnite on 6/3/2007 8:11:13 AM , Rating: 1
Yes Matrox still exists, In-fact if I remember correctly they released the Matrox Parhelia around the time of the Geforce 4 TI.
They were the first company to introduce a Directx 9.0 compatible card I think. (Even before the Radeon 9700/9500

It comes with: (Which was amazing at the time, truely even if the performance wasn't).

36-stage shader array
* 4 pixel pipes
* 4 texturing units per pipe
* 5 pixel shader stages per pixel pipe
* Support for up to 10 pixel stages per pass
* 4 pixels/clock throughput with quad texturing and 5 pixel shader operations

Hardware displacement Mapping
* Patent-pending depth-adaptive tessellation for continuous level of detail geometry
* Vertex texturing for dynamic generation of geometry using texture maps
* Support for Bezier curves and N-patch (PN-triangle) evaluation

Quad Vertex Shader Array
* Four vertex shader units (DX8 and higher)
* Parallel processing of up to 16 vertices
* 512 instruction on-chip cache
* 256 constant registers
* Quad texturing per pixel, per clock cycle
* 64 super sample texture filtering

o Dynamic allocation of texture units
o 8-sample anisotropic and trilinear filtering on 4 dual-textured pixels/clock
o 16-sample anisotropic filtering on a 4 single-textured pixels/clock

16x Fragment Antialiasing (FAA-16x)
* 16x super sampling quality on edge pixels only
* Avoids blurring of internal pixels
* Low performance overhead
* Supports for Full Scene Antialiasing (FSAA)

Parhelia-512 GPU Specs

* True 512-bit GPU
* 80 million transistors in a 0.15u fabrication process
* 220MHz Core speed
* 325MHz memory speed (650MHz DDR)
* True 256-bit DDR memory interface
* Up to 20GB/sec. memory bandwidth
* Up to 256MB DDR unified frame buffer
* 10-bit Gigacolor Technology

o 10-bit per channel RGB rendering and output
o Over one billion simultaneously displayed colors
o 10-bit precision for 2D, 3D, DVD and video
o 10-bit frame buffer mode for ARGB (2:10:10:10)
o 10-bit RAMDACs with full gamma correction

* AGP host interface designed up to AGP8X

o Fast Writes supported

* 8-way parallel DMA streaming engine
* OpenGL1.3 and DX8.1 compliant

Performance wise, the fastest card on the block at the time of its release was the Geforce 4 TI4600 at higher resolutions with AA and AF the Parhelia was neck and neck or even surpassed the Geforce 4 TI 4600 and Radeon 8500, But at lower resolutions and settings, the Geforce 4 TI 4600 was the gruntier card.


RE: ???
By GaryJohnson on 6/2/2007 12:45:10 PM , Rating: 2
Shouldn't you be able to do that with any HD tuner/capture card?


RE: ???
By Gul Westfale on 6/2/2007 12:51:35 PM , Rating: 2
well from what i understand he wants to record to the PC while shooting, and i don't think a regular card can do that in an acceptable quality. i'm not an expert on this though; i will do some research.


RE: ???
By Deinonych on 6/2/2007 2:25:14 PM , Rating: 3
Don't expect Sony or Panasonic to support HDV. The AVCHD format, which they developed, competes with HDV. AVCHD uses MPEG-4 instead of the MPEG-2 codec used on HDV, so it has the technical advantage of recording the same quality with lower storage requirements.


RE: ???
By Christopher1 on 6/2/2007 4:16:08 PM , Rating: 2
Hmm.... That MPEG-4 that AVCHD uses might make it a better option anyway. I don't know why ALL people haven't switched over to MPEG-4 now, if it is a technologically superior and better codec than MPEG-2.


RE: ???
By Vertigo101 on 6/2/2007 5:30:16 PM , Rating: 2
Most Mpeg-4 variants user inter-frame compression techniques, which make it quite a pain to edit, yet this is what makes them so efficient.


RE: ???
By MrCoyote on 6/2/2007 8:03:15 PM , Rating: 3
AVCHD is hardly "superior". It may be more efficient, but as the other guy said, it is difficult to edit properly. I personally don't like either HDV nor AVCHD. They both use interframe compression that doesn't keep each individual frame.

DV is still "superior" in the sense that it is intraframe compression. Each individual frame is kept and this makes it easy to edit, just like uncompressed video. Too bad DV is standard definition only, and there is no consumer high-def standard.


RE: ???
By mars777 on 6/3/2007 12:26:52 AM , Rating: 3
Dual/Quad-core is hardly "superior". It may be more powerful, but it is difficult to program properly.
Sould we be doing 50Ghz processors with a 500W tdp ?

Move on. It must be done so why whine?


RE: ???
By Arf on 6/3/2007 10:01:29 AM , Rating: 1
Since Sony co-developed HDV, I think your comment is a bit removed from reality. In fact, on the market today Sony has more HDV products available than any competitor.

AVCHD and HDV are aimed at different users - HDV offering ease of editing and AVC offering better compression efficiency.

The probable reason that this product does not offer HDV input is the difficulty of decompressing an HD MPEG2-TS stream, and re-encoding it as AVCHD in real time... The processing required is prob'ly not feasible at the moment.


RE: ???
By Deinonych on 6/3/2007 10:22:23 AM , Rating: 2
Perhaps I should have been more clear: don't expect Sony or Panasonic to continue to push HDV moving forward. I realize that Sony has several HDV camcorders. However, their most recent camcorders have all been AVCHD models.


RE: ???
By Deinonych on 6/3/2007 10:25:09 AM , Rating: 2
Also, how is HDV easier to edit? It uses interframe compression just like AVCHD.


RE: ???
By EclipsedAurora on 6/4/2007 7:58:46 AM , Rating: 2
The whole world knows that most video editing software can support MPEG2, while nearly none of those software pack can edit H.264, including the industrial standard Adobe Premiere!


Proprietary
By Alexstarfire on 6/3/2007 10:49:19 AM , Rating: 2
Yay, a proprietary burner for proprietary camcorders. I think we should start calling Sony, Mr Proprietary.




This is cool....
By SirJoe on 6/2/07, Rating: -1
RE: This is cool....
By bubbacub616 on 6/2/2007 8:01:51 PM , Rating: 2
you are seriously lame trying to trap dailytechers into signing up for a fee based crappy web game (and give you jewels/credits for getting more people in)


"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak." -- Robert Heinlein








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