After months of slyly promising a new Blu-ray camcorder, Hitachi announced the North American September release of the DZ-BD10HA, the triple-format recording follow-up to the highly rated DZ-BD7HA.
The DZ-BD10HA records up to 4 hours and 20 minutes of video (at 1920x1080 resolution), or 8 hours 40 minutes (at 1440x1080) onto three different formats: a 30 GB HDD, straight onto a full sized Blu-ray disk, or onto an SDHC card.
In the same way that last year's model allowed a user to switch up a recorded file from one storage format to another, this one promises a further advancement in efficiency: transcoding video from the camcorder into a DVD disk, for family members still stuck on the popular format.
Further editing capabilities, like splicing transitions and merging files, can also be facilitated on its physical menu. New features include the en vogue face detection, as well as a 7-mega pixel CMOS Image Sensor that records video at a 4.67-mega pixel resolution.
But the best thing about this is the expected price: $1099, or about a third less than last year's model. Clearly, the Blu leaders know they have the goal wide open for a score and they can't blow it -- only a few months have passed since the Blu-ray format killed the HD DVD, but it hasn't placed anything substantial in the net (i.e. most Blu stuff is too expensive). Other than occupying a larger shelf space in video stores and offering slightly increased number of BD movies available, we're not seeing the format burning up the media landscape.
What they need is baby-totin' parents taking Blu-ray videos of Junior kicking lassie in the groinage area. Making it easy for them to transfer it to a physical disk to mail off to grandma might speed things up.
