Hitachi has launched the world’s first Blu-ray disc camcorders. Dubbed DZ-BD70A and DZ-BD7HA, the new camcorders surely mark a breakthrough in technology.

The DZ-BD70A camcorder is a single drive device that has the ability to record around one hour of Full HD 1920×1080 high-def video on 8cm single-sided recordable and re-recordable Blu-ray disc. The Hitachi camcorder incorporates Hitachi’s 5.3 MP CMOS image sensor and HD quality 12-element lens system. Furthermore, DZ-BD70A does not merely record high definition video to Blu-ray discs, but it additionally also comes with an SD card slot for storing digital still photos at 4.32 MP max resolution. Thanks to Hitachi’s novel Photo Capture feature, the camcorder enables users to through recordings on a Blu-ray disc; grab any still frame of video and save it as a photo to the SD card slot in 2.1 MP resolution. For further recording flexibility, the DZ-BD70A allows video recording in standard definition quality to DVD discs (DVD-R/-RW/-RAM).

It's quite amazing just how much high quality video you can now fit on one disk

Here is a review with the tech specs. I am thinking that the next big challenge is making batteries that will outlast the recording time.


Hitachi blu-ray camcorder review