The humble VCR may not be dead yet. Fighting back against the growing onslaught from PVRs like Tivo and Replay and recordable DVD, comes the NV-HVH1 video deck from Japanese giant Matsushita. This nifty little product is a standard hi-fi VHS video cassette recorder with a built in 40 GB hard disk. The hard disk will hold up to 40 hours of recorded material, and the $700.00 unit will also be able to dub between tape and disk at will. The deck also has the ability to offer Tivo like time-shift recording and incorporates a Firewire IEEE1394 socket for external connectivity.

Apparently this is not the first of this type of machine to hit the Japanese streets, as Toshiba and JVC also have launched their own versions. No sign of when (if?) they will make it over to Europe or the rest of the world.

Note that these products will probably be using the iVDR copy protected hard disks mentioned here.