Panasonic DMR-BWT700

Panasonic DMR-BWT700 review

After witnessing the 3D greatness of its latest Viera plasmas, we shouldn't be too surprised to see the Japanese brand go on to deliver the cleverest hi-def machine yet.Do we mean Blu-ray? Well, yes, sort of … the DMR-BWT700 does indeed spin Blu-ray discs of both kinds – 2D and 3D.It even converts the former into the latter, and not just on Blu-ray but DVD and Freeview HD, too. The latter comes from one of its two DVB-T2 tuners that fetch (and pauses/rewinds) Freeview HD channels, but it's this deck's status as a HD recorder that's got us most excited. It can't record from the Sky 3D channel, but anything else can be stored on its 320GB hard disk drive (here's the maths: one hour of SD uses 1GB, and an hour of HD uses 4GB – that's 80 hours in total). That could be a tad small in the long run, especially for those who stick to a strict hi-def diet, but there's also the option of archiving to Blu-ray.We say 'option', but there are actually a plethora of compression modes designed to allow the user to squeeze as much as possible on to a blank BD-R or BD-RE disc (bear in mind the 'copy once' restrictions, though it deals freely in AVCHD footage from camcorders).