Panasonic Freesat Blu-ray deck is a jawdropper, exclusive hands-on review of DMR-BS850

It’s no exaggeration to say that the £999 DMR-BS850 is the most advanced digital recorder yet sold in the UK; due to go down in AV history as the UK’s first Blu-ray recorder, it sports a 500GB hard drive and twin Freesat HD tuners.

That alone should be enough to grab headlines. But the deck does more. As I slowly, reverentially snooped my way around this review sample, I began to wonder not what it could do, but what it couldn’t.

David Preece, Panasonic’s marketing manager, told me weeks ago that it wasn’t so much a recorder as a media hub. And I think he’s right. The thing is a Cadillac of convergence.

Out of the box, the BS850 is not significantly taller than Panasonic’s current BD player range, the DMP-BD60 and BD80. It looks meaningful if conservative. A fascia flap to the right pulls down to reveal analogue video inputs, SD card slot and a firewire port. The latter sent a ripple of excitement up my spine because I thought I’d be able to dub some of my old home movies up to Blu-ray – then I realised I didn’t have a working DV camcorder.

Connectivity explained
The disc tray is offset to the left (but in typically perverse Panasonic style, the eject button is ranged to the right). Backside connections include analogue AV inputs, two Scarts, HDMI out, component and (multi-purpose) Ethernet.

This BD deck is Profile 2.0 BonusView compliant;  more significantly it allows access to Panasonic’s proprietary VieraCast gateway to internet content. Currently that means you can view YouTube videos and browse Picassa photo albums (my online photo account is with Flickr – doh!).

And as this is a Freesat HD unit, it also means that you’ll be able to access the BBC iPlayer – once it goes live on Freesat. The LAN connection on this deck will clearly get a lot more use than the average BD disc-spinner. Unfortunately, despite Ethernet connectivity the device is not networkable. It wasn’t discovered by other devices on my LAN, which seems kind of odd in this day and age.

With two tuners (a much overdue first for Panasonic!), you can record two channels simultaneously. Using the 7-day Freesat EPG, you’ll be given the option to record a show in HD if ITV is broadcasting two versions (see picture below).

Recording options
All recordings are made to the unit’s hard drive in DR (bitstream) format. That’s to say, you record exactly the transport stream delivered, giving you access to bolt-ons like subtitles and audio descriptions. Naturally, this also means image and sound quality are as transmitted (which in the case of BBC HD is generally awesome). You can then dub these to BD in any one of four HD compression modes (HG, HX, HE, HL) which reduce the bit-rate incrementally. The most economic, HL, allows 12 hours on a single-layer BD-R, effectively squishing recordings with a bitrate of 14Mbps to just 4Mbps.
It’s a remarkable example of advanced h.264 economy. I found artefacts to be low and for most viewers the results will still look undeniably hi-def. I can’t wait to get this recorder into the HCC Tech Labs to see how these compressed modes stand up to detailed scrutiny.

Beware Copy Flags
Compressed recordings can then be dubbed to disc – provided the broadcaster is agreeable. All of the BBC’s content is currently flagged Copy Once. This means that after you’ve captured it on your hard drive, you can copy it only once to BD media. The status of the original recording is revealed in a graphical flag which counts down from one to zero.

Broadcasters have the ability to further restrict usage with a Copy Never flag. Obviously you won’t find out about that until you’ve recorded the programme in question.
However, while the BBC has moved its HD broadcasts to Copy Once (with a promise of Copy Free this Summer), ITV is less generous. It soon became clear after using the recorder that ITV is currently flagging its limited HD transmissions as Copy Never – even old back catalogue movies. So with these you can record on the HDD but not archive to disc. This situation really needs to be resolved if consumers are to have any faith in the technology.

Solid home cinema source
As a Blu-ray player, the 850 is analogous to the BD60; images are pin-sharp while noise (still a problem to my mind with some BD discs) is acceptably low; video processing comes via the latest iteration of Panasonic’s UniPhier chipset. The player can bitstream both DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD out over HDMI, so its credentials as a home cinema source are solid.

How much?
The 850 comes to market at about the same price as Panasonic’s first ever DVD recorder, but it offers a quantum leap in performance. It’s difficult to peg in terms of value, but if you want the best hi-def recorder in town, you wouldn’t expect it to come cheap. The question many buyers will ask is: how long before the price falls to something easier to digest? I suspect the answer is some time. Panasonic's rivals will find it difficult to launch against this product in the short term.

Overall I’d rate the BS850 as an amazing bit of kit. Panasonic has launched a number of BD recorders globally (in Japan, France, Australia, with Germany to come shortly), but none are an exact match of this model. It’s unique and more than a little brilliant.

HCC verdict 5/5