Pioneer Freestanding DVD Recorder at COMDEX

by Alan Sheckter, SmartTV & Sound news editor

Pioneer’s DVR-7000 DVD recorder, introduced at PC Expo in June, was also shown at COMDEX this week. And boasting its playback compatibility with what it calls “most” existing DVD computer drives and freestanding units, Pioneer represents one more company making an effort to push DVD authoring into the mainstream.

The DVR-7000 is equipped with three recording modes. Video mode offers the ability users to record up to 120 minutes of content onto a single DVD-R/RW disk. Standard mode allows video capture and real-time MPEG-2 compression, and manual mode lets users record from one to six hours of content on a single DVD-RW disc, depending on the selected image quality.

The unit is also equipped with an “instant recording” feature, which, once a disc is inserted into the drive, cues it up to the proper place and begins recording. Users can then tag recorded sections and refer to them on the title page, where they are displayed as thumbnail images.

The DVR-7000 has an IEEE 1394 port, three audio/video inputs, two S-video inputs and
outputs, a component video output, and one optical and one coaxial digital audio output.

One report listed the DVR-7000’s list price at $2,800.