World’s First Blu-Ray Camcorder by Hitachi

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

The way I see it, why would you not want HD footage on mini Blu-Ray discs as apposed to standard mini DVD’s? That’s a full 7.5 gigs of storage for a single layer disc. Hitachi is in a very good position knowing that they will be the first company to advance to newer technology.

There are already around 5 million Blu-Ray units in people’s homes and yes that does include the PS3 and look how quickly PS3 sales got to be once Sony decided to decrease the price by 100 dollars. Sales went up by around 135%. People are already seeing it as a great media box and other than playing video games and watching Blu-Ray movies; you can serf the web, watch photos and view HDV and AVCHD files on a Data DVD. Because of that, your average consumer doesn’t need to know anything about authoring discs in order to play it on a PS3. If you think about it, the PS3 is the perfect compliment for a TV station just as long as the interns don’t use it for games when their working.

Look how convenient the hard drive version is. You can record your footage on the hard drive and make Blu-Ray copies on the camcorder without using a computer. That’s a great way to give out copies to your friends.

The PS3 is a great media player no doubt, although there's not 5 million Blu-Ray units even counting PS3. It's about 1.5 million PS3 and 140,000 standalone blu-ray players.

There's no proof BD-R/RE will play on Blu-Ray players. So far, it's quite well established that BD-R/RE disks don't play on any of the Sony or Panasonic standalone players. That leaves it basically to PS3 which already plays AVCHD or HDV from DVD5/9 or the internal HDD.

So if your friends fall in the category of owning a PS3, you can give out working HD copies to them with or without BD media.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

The PS3 is a great media player no doubt, although there's not 5 million Blu-Ray units even counting PS3. It's about 1.5 million PS3 and 140,000 standalone blu-ray players.

There's no proof BD-R/RE will play on Blu-Ray players. So far, it's quite well established that BD-R/RE disks don't play on any of the Sony or Panasonic standalone players. That leaves it basically to PS3 which already plays AVCHD or HDV from DVD5/9 or the internal HDD.

I was really talking about World wide sales and if I were to give an extremely conservative estimate, I would put it at 4 million units.

Sony players have been receiving upgrades to play at least BD-R discs, and I’ve heard Panasonic and Samsung players should play them fine. As for BD-RE discs, I don’t know what the issue is with all players. Most people will distribute BD-R disc anyway.

Anybody wants to come in here and confirm the compatibilities with BD-R and BD-RE with each Blu-Ray player including the latest firmware upgrades?

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

I was really talking about World wide sales and if I were to give an extremely conservative estimate, I would put it at 4 million units.

Sony players have been receiving upgrades to play at least BD-R discs, and I’ve heard Panasonic and Samsung players should play them fine. As for BD-RE discs, I don’t know what the issue is with all players. Most people will distribute BD-R disc anyway.

Anybody wants to come in here and confirm the compatibilities with BD-R and BD-RE with each Blu-Ray player including the latest firmware upgrades?

Samsung standalone players support BD-R/RE, but many Sony, Panasonic and Pioneer's do not. I'm sorry Paulo, but Blu-Ray for simple distribution is a mess. You can reach the mass of PS3 owners with your HD video on AVCHD or HDV, but you don't need BD media for that. I'd buy a BD burner tomorrow if Blu-Ray was a viable format. But it's inexcusable to have compatibility issues at this stage.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Tom Roper,

You heard that Panasonic and Sony players have problems while I heard that with the latest firmware, they don’t have a problem at least with BD-R media. Theirs no point in someone taking my word or yours if we never tried it. That’s why I believe its best to have someone who actually tried it with their own player to verify it. Besides, even if there are a few players such as the Pioneers that have problems, they have until October when this camcorder is released to provide a firmware update.

[Tom Roper]

Paulo,
Sony and Panasonic are not stating compatibility with BD-R/RE. In fact, I believe you will find express disclaimers. There are ample examples of standalone Blu-Ray players not playing BD-R/RE already. While I sincerely hope that future firmware upgrades will bring BD-R/RE compatibility, I find it unsatisfactory that you have to rely on the owner to upgrade his firmware when any disk calling itself "Blu-Ray" should be compatible out of the gate, sorry.

[Tom Roper]

According to SS Scott, moderator at the Roxio forums, what's happening behind the scenes may not be good.

There are two types of BD authoring, BDAV (no menus, no interactive) and BDMV (interactive with menus).

BDAV authoring is intended for users to burn their content like camcorder footage onto BD-R/RE media, and the interactive format BDMV was intended for BD-ROM. But a ripped copy from BD-ROM looks just like BDMV authored for BD-R/RE, so under studio pressure, namely Sony, the simple fix is to disable BD-R/RE playback. While some first generation Sony Blu-Ray players added BD-R/RE playback in a firmware update, the newest 2nd generation Sony player the BDP-S300 has eliminated it. Speculation is that future firmware updates may retroactively disable BD-R/RE playback, even on the PS3.

It is still speculation, but it comes from a good source.

Needless to say, it's confusing and disappointing, and puts Blu-Ray authoring on BD-R/RE into a state of uncertainty.

http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=25294
http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=23713

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

ASpeculation is that future firmware updates may retroactively disable BD-R/RE playback, even on the PS3.

It is still speculation, but it comes from a good source.

Needless to say, it's confusing and disappointing, and puts Blu-Ray authoring on BD-R/RE into a state of uncertainty.

http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=25294
http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=23713

I do believe that if there’s no physical hardware limitation on the player than their will be a firmware update on the tiny fraction of units that’s affected by this since there are multiples times more PS3’s than all of the stand-alone Blu-Ray players put together. I don’t have to mention how much problems some of the original DVD players had with blank media. You couldn’t get firmware updates for those. Still, this camcorder already plays on most Blu-Ray players.

I’m about to help people get their documentaries distributed on Blu-Ray and HD DVD and if Sony ever disables BR-R playback on the PS3, they’ll be havoc because this allows Producers to see how their feature will look like before they send it off to a disc manufacturer. They can always buy one without the latest firmware update but its still a bad idea. This would be the worst thing they can ever do to Blu-Ray but I’m not worried about it at all because other than Pioneer, Panasonic, Hitachi, etc, Sony also makes Blu-Ray burners.

[Chris Hull]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

The way I see it, why would you not want HD footage on mini Blu-Ray discs as apposed to standard mini DVD’s? That’s a full 7.5 gigs of storage for a single layer disc. Hitachi is in a very good position knowing that they will be the first company to advance to newer technology.

There are already around 5 million Blu-Ray units in people’s homes and yes that does include the PS3 and look how quickly PS3 sales got to be once Sony decided to decrease the price by 100 dollars. Sales went up by around 135%. People are already seeing it as a great media box and other than playing video games and watching Blu-Ray movies; you can serf the web, watch photos and view HDV and AVCHD files on a Data DVD. Because of that, your average consumer doesn’t need to know anything about authoring discs in order to play it on a PS3. If you think about it, the PS3 is the perfect compliment for a TV station just as long as the interns don’t use it for games when their working, On break that’s a different story. Anyway, If you don’t have a Blu-Ray player, it wont matter that much because you can hook up the camcorder to an HD TV thru HDMI or component.

Look how convenient the hard drive version is. You can record your footage on the hard drive and make Blu-Ray copies on the camcorder without using a computer. That’s a great way to give out copies to your friends.

Back in 2000, Hitachi was the first to release a consumer mini DVD camcorder and they sold so fast that Panasonic had to immediately make their own, and once Sony saw how popular they were, they decided to release their own version as well and now, even Canon has mini DVD based camcorders. The same thing will happen to this camcorder where the other companies will have to release their own version.

it would be great if you could put existing hdv tape footage to the hard drive then make blue-ray disks but wishfull thinking probobly.chris

[Philip Raymond]

First, I'll be the first to admit any camcorder has to be seen to believe the hype, but this looks almost unbeatable on paper. Here's a link to E-MediaLive.com's article on the new Hitachi Blu-Ray camcorder that records 1080p to either a hard-drive or an 8cm single sided Bly-Ray disc.
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...rticleID=13047

For what it claims it can do, the price is unbelievable too, $1299 for Blu-Ray disc only, $1499 for a 30GB Hard drive and Blu-Ray recorder. This one will even dub from the Hard drive to the Blu-Ray disc in the camera.

[Gabriel Yeager]

Wow... That looks sounds wicked!

~Gabriel

[Paulo Teixeira]

Some extra details to note:
For the good news, the dubbing from hard drive to Buy-Ray is 2X and it has a microphone input. For the bad news, besides lack of 24p, there is another thing that may turn some people away is the fact that it uses an electronic image stabilizer as apposed to optical but since it records in 1920X1080, it may not be a problem. It has manual focusing but it’ll be just as bad as what Sony, Canon and Panasonic uses. Like I stated earlier, it should have had a manual focusing ring, you know, the traditional kind, not the gimmicks that aren’t as easy to use.

With all that said, I still wouldn’t mind owning this camcorder. In fact, if I had the money I would purchase it the first day it’s released in Japan. Like Philip, I’m also fascinated about that dubbing and clip splitting feature. That’s perfect for making a simple documentary or a film although it would have been better if the hard drive was bigger because a lot of good documentaries for example need a bare minimum of several hours’ worth of footage before it’s edited to around 1 hour. Anyway, I hope the accuracy of the cuts isn’t bad.




Hitachi should also release a professional version with a 64 gig Solid State Drive and a 6X Blu-Ray burner.

The technology is already hare:
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/7090
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/19/l...id-drives-and/

[Paulo Teixeira]

Photos:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7931/gallery/
http://www.engadget.com/photos/hands...-camcorders-2/

[Jason Rodriguez]

Is there anywhere to see some image samples either from the 4.3Mpix still frames or video?

[Paulo Teixeira]

Here is a video of a Hitachi representative talking about this camcorder. http://techvideoblog.com/ifa/hitachi...-hd-camcorder/

I’m sure some of you will recognize the voice of the person who made this video. He’s been contributing a lot every time he goes to these types of shows. I have also posted his RAW JVC HD1000 clip in this thread:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.ph...783#post738783

I haven’t found any RAW samples for Hitachi’s HD camcorders yet.

[Ivan Pin]

Japanese watch.impress Hitachi DZ-BD7H review: http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

With video and still frames samples.