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Hitachi is known to bring out innovative and interesting consumer electronics products. And the latest ones join the bandwagon.

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

Hitachi America product manager Jeff Fochtman said, “It was important for us to be the first to offer consumers the impressive benefits of Blu-ray disc technology. To be the first manufacturer to create two models of the world’s first Blu-ray disc camcorders that shoot, playback and store HD video is a huge milestone for us and something we are exceptionally proud of.”

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).

The second camcorder, called DZ-BD7HA, is essentially a Hybrid model. They term it so as it has the capability to offer Blu-ray disc recording function along with a 30 GB built-in Hard Disk Drive (HDD) that can record around four hours of 1920×1080 high definition video (HX mode) or up to eight hours of 1440×1080 high definition video (HS mode). In addition, with just one press of a button, the Hitachi DZ-BD7HA camcorder can copy the contents from HDD to BD within the camcorder itself, a major convenience feature for on-the-move users who now have the power to evade external devices (PCs, etc.) altogether to quickly dub a highlight reel. Simple editing functions including split, delete and connect can also be made right in the camcorder before using the 1-touch dubbing function to burn Blu-ray disc copies.

Apart from transferring high-def video from the HDD to Blu-ray discs, the new Transcoding feature makes it possible for users to select high definition video stored on the HDD to be transferred to standard definition DVD copies using the 1-touch dubbing feature. With this ability users get the choice and flexibility to burn either high definition (Blu-ray) copies or standard definition (DVD) copies. And furthermore, in order to make it fast and simple, it’s all done within the camcorder itself.

In addition, Hitachi DZ-BD70A and DZ-BD7HA camcorders pack in HDMI ports enabling users to connect it to an HDMI compatible large screen TV to fully enjoy full high definition videos. The camcorder’s LCD monitor lets you review recorded video and display 12 thumbnails, for easy scene navigation. Interestingly, the camcorders’ Blu-ray disc drive is compatible with five types of industry standard discs: BD-RE/-R, DVD-RAM/-RW/-R. The drive has two optical pick-ups for BD and DVD and a flat pick-up with compact aberration correction function for BD.

Both the Hitachi camcorders are available right away in Japan and should be hitting North America’s store shelves by October 2007. While the DZBD70A Blu-ray camcorder is priced at about $1,299, the DZBD7HA model Blu-ray Hybrid with built-in 30GB HDD comes for around $1,499.