Digit-Life has one of the first looks at Sony's new Blu-ray DVD recorder, the $3800 BDZ-S77.

SONY BDZ-S77 has a built-in digital BS (broadcasting satellite) tuner for digital satellite television. In addition to 2 hours of high-quality video you can record MPEG-2 AAC 5.1 sound from digital satellite boadcasting. One-layer one-side optical blu-ray disc can contain 23 GB.

In contrast to the conventional DVD-Video media (red laser), the new-generation discs work with a blue laser with the wavelength of 405 nm. It corresponds to blue color on the color spectrum. The maximum capacity of a one-side one-layer blu-ray disc makes 27 GB against 4.7 GB of DVD-ROM. The lens aperture is 0.85. The bitrate including service data is 36 Mbit/s. The disc diameter remains equal to CD and DVD, i.e. 120 mm. The disc is 1.2 mm thick with the protective layer being 0.1 mm. Recording method is phase transition. Groove technology is used to form tracks. Video format: MPEG2. Audio format: DolbyDigital AC3, MPEG2 Audio etc.

High capacity, read speed and processing provided by the standard make possible to lift the data rate up to 36 Mbit/s even on a one-layer one-side disc at 1x read speed! A typical bitrate for DVD-Video for video image makes 3-4 and 8-9 Mbit/s (one and two layers, respectively). In case of satellite television signal recording in HDTV standard it's possible to store approximately 2 hours of high-quality video (1024i). At lower bitrates and without multichannel sound one disc can house 6 or 12 hours in SR and LR modes (their quality correspond to two-layer and one-layer DVD-Video).