New Panasonic recorders bring HDTV to DVD, HDD, VHS

Turning its attention from its CES releases, Panasonic on Friday released two entries in its DIGA high-defnition video recorder lines. The XP12 and XP22V are both capable of transcoding HDTV from their digital over-the-air tuners into the more efficient AVCHD (H.264) video format, allowing more video to fit on either DVR's 250GB hard drives without losing perceived quality. Each can also record this video at its full HD size to single- and dual-layer DVD-R discs to preserve them for later viewing on the recorder or any other device that can play AVCHD from normal discs. The XP22V adds VHS recording, Panasonic says, though whether these videos will remain at HD sizes is unknown.