Hitachi shows off DZ-BD7H and DZ-BD70 Blu-ray camcorders

Pipped that "world first" accolade after all

2 August 2007 9:33 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

After we brought you new that they were on their way, Hitachi have formally announced the world's first Blu-ray Disc Camcorders, which record one hour of 1920 x 1080 Full High-Definition video onto Blu-ray.

There are two models, the DZ-BD7H which has a 30GB HDD and as well as an 8cm BD disc recorder and the DZ-BD70 with BD technology only.

The new camcorders will start selling in Japan on August 30 and will see releases elsewhere in the world from October.

The DZ-BD7H, the hybrid model, can record approximately four hours of 1920 x 1080 full high-definition video, or up to eight hours of 1440 x 1080 high-definition video.

It can also copy the contents from HDD to 8cm BD within the camcorder so there's no need for external devices.

The DZ-BD70 is the BD single drive model and can record approximately one hour of 1920 x 1080 full high-definition video (two hours of 1440 x 1080 high definition video) on a 8cm BD.

The new BD camcorders boast a full high-definition lens, 5.3-megapixel progressive CMOS image sensor with effective 2.07-megapixels for video and 4.32-megapixels for still photo as well as the newly developed full high definition signal processor "Picture Master Full HD" and the world's first 8cm BD drive.

The price of the cheapest model is set to be 160,000 Yen, which converts to about £650, which should give you an idea of cost, although other factors mean pricing is rarely that easily comparable.

UPDATES: Both Verbatim and Imation have now launched Mini Blu-ray (8cm discs) to work with this product - links to those news stories below.