Hitachi Refines its Blu-ray Camcorder

The new, smaller DZ-BD10HA can burn DVDs, detect faces, and perform edits in-camera, along with a few other tricks Hitachi snuck onboard.

Hitachi pretty much invented the Blu-ray camcorder segment with its original DZ-BD70HA that was able to record HD video on miniature 8cm Blu-ray discs or a built-in hard drive. Now the company has gone back and revised its original innovator to roll out the DZ-BD10HA, a fine-tuned new model with additional features and upgrades.

Unlike the earliest incarnations of the camera, which were able to record only on Blu-ray and an integrated 30GB SSD, the DZ-BD10HA also gets an SDHC card reader for expanding storage or recording directly to a reusable removable media. And although it can’t record directly to DVD, Hitachi has also added a DVD transcoding feature to the DZ-BD10HA, allowing users to burn DVDs from the SSD or an SDHC card for friends without Blu-ray drives.

A built-in dubbing feature also allows for simple in-camera edits, such as splitting, splicing, deleting, merging, and adding transitions. To improve image quality, Hitachi added face detection to automatically prioritize camera settings for faces as you shoot, and optical image stabilization for canceling out camera shake.

The volume of the entire camera has even dropped by 20 percent, thanks to a revamped optical drive that should also use less power and run quieter.

Although the camera cropped up in Japan on August 9, it won’t show up in North America until September 2008, when it will retail for $1099.