Going on sale in Japan only, the $1400 personal video recorder doesn’t feature a DVD drive, but can be connected via Ethernet to the Vaio PC range, using “Sony’s Click To DVD” software.

Users can edit the footage stored on the PVR and then make their own DVDs, or store programmes off line permanently.

The EX11 has three quality setting which equate to High Quality (114 hours, 9Mbps), Standard (171 hours, 6Mbps) and Extended Play (3Mbps). The recorder makes use of an EPG for automatic recording and is equipped with two tuners and two MPEG2 encoders, allowing users to record two programmes simultaneously. Also useful is the inclusion of a memory stick slot for displaying photographs.

The PVR features two analogue and one D1 digital video output. Interestingly, Sony have chose Linux as the PVR’s OS. This seems to be increasingly common on this type of platform - TiVo recorders use an older Linux kernel.

PC World link