The new HD DVD recorder that Toshiba has just revealed is likely to become a hot item on the market with the occasion of the approaching winter holiday shopping season. The new HD DVD recorder, through which Toshiba hopes to hit the rival Blu-ray Disc camp, represents quite a tough device because it can record high definition video to regular DVDs.

The new HD DVD recorder that Toshiba has launched is called Vardia RD-A301 and the company has said it is to launch it in Japan in mid-December. It represents a powerful device because it can record high def video to regular DVDs as well as transcode high def MPEG2 broadcasts on the fly to MPEG4, which represents a more efficient compression format. The MPEG4 video format features also the quality that it takes up less space and this way people will be able to store even more on an HD DVD disc or on the device’s own built-in 300 GB hard disk drive.

The increase in recording capacity through this process of transcoding appears to be quite fantastic, as the hard disk drive’s capacity jumps from 39 hours to no less than 159 hours for terrestrial digital TV (the Japanese ISDB-T standard at 17 Mbps).

The process of recording high definition video to the tradition DVD disc has become possible only recently, thanks to the HD Rec, which represents a recently standardized format from the DVD Forum. The HD Rec makes it possible for the users to store up to 2 hours of transcoded high definition video on a tradition 4.7 GB DVD-R disc. This way, people are able to enjoy the high def quality and also to save money by using DVD discs, not the still expensive HD DVDs.

However, the playback of the DVDs created with Toshiba’s Vardia RD-A301 is limited at present only to this device. Toshiba’s new recorder will be available in Japan only and it will cost about 100,000 Yen ($875).