After satisfying the demands in the professional market, Pioneer Corp is now planning to release full recordable set-top DVD players in 2000.The company will launch the world’s first recordable DVD players and DVD discs in North America and Europe next year, according to a press comments on Friday.

The new video machines allow recording of up to six hours and will be first sold in Japan from December 3 at a price of 250, 000 yen ($2,399) each, a Pioneer spokesman said. The company aims to sell 30,000 units in Japan by March 2000 and 150,000 to 200,000 in Japan in the year starting next April.

Pioneer has yet to set an overseas sales target or the exact date of its sales start-up, he said. Blank recordable DVD-RW discs will cost 3,000 yen ($28.79) each, the spokesman said.

This is the first step into the direction of home-user DVD recordable devices and it will be interesting to see how fast the prices for these machines will plummet.