Hitachi to launch Blu-ray camcorder

A world first

20 July 2007 10:00 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Hitachi has announced it is working on a Blu-ray camcorder.

The camcorder, which would be the world's first (if no-one nabs that accolade in the meantime) should be introduced this Autumn, we assume in the Far East.

The drive inside the camcorder will be eight centimetres and will have a 5.3 million pixels image device built-in, it will be backed up with an LSI chip capable of handling the 1080p compression.

Apparently recordable disks for the device will also be launched at the same time but it will be backwards compatible with DVDs.

Reports state that the camcorder will be capable of recording one hour of video on a single layer of one side of the disk.

This capability does not compare particularly favourably to more able format-neutral high-def camcorders currently available.

However, increasing Blu-ray product lines to encompass more devices than just disk players (and the PS3) could be seen as a way to both boost the appeal of the format and speed up consumer adoption.