Friday, 10 August 2007

Hitachi Launches Blu-Ray Camcorders

Hitachi, one of the developers of the Blu-Ray video technology has launched two new Blu-Ray camcorders with model numbers DZ-BD70A and DZ-BD7HA...

Hitachi, one of the developers of the Blu-Ray video technology has launched two new Blu-Ray camcorders with model numbers DZ-BD70A and DZ-BD7HA.

The cameras use a new variety of Blu-ray Disc that is 8 centimeters in diameter. Hitachi Maxell said it would put the 7.5GB discs on sale. The DZ-BD70 will be based solely on the discs and the DZ-BD7H is a hybrid model with 30GB hard disk drive. This feature enables the user to record high definition or standard resolution video on the hard drive and then dub the recorded video to either Blu-ray Disc or standard DVDs. In addition, both camcorders can also take high-resolution still images.

Hitachi said a single-sided record able (BD-R) or rewritable (BD-RE) disc can store about an hour of footage shot in full high-definition quality (1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels). The hybrid model can store an additional four hours of high-definition video on its hard-disk drive. The Blu-ray Disc recording uses the MPEG4 AVC/H.264 compression system and the cameras can also record standard definition MPEG2 video to 8cm DVD discs.

The cameras have a 10X optical zoom lens, a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor and a viewfinder. In addition to the video function the cameras can also be used to take still images at up to 4.3-mega pixel resolution (2,400 pixels by 1,800 pixels).