camcorders

Backing up its long-standing desire to be first out with a Blu-ray DVD camcorder--a spokesman told me more than a year ago that the company planned to be first, and the company had a prototype on display at Ceatac last year (see slide show)--Hitachi issued a press release last Friday with a few specs and a promise for availability this fall.

The skimpy specs include a 5-megapixel 1/2.8-inch 1920x1080 CMOS sensor from Altasens, and that it will compress and record in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format to 3-inch BD-RE/-R and DVD-RAM/-RW/-R discs. The camcorder … Read more

Based on a post on a Japanese Web site, Gizmodo has decided to put its rumor mill into high gear, speculating that Blu-ray camcorders will be available by the end of the year. Of course, news that Hitachi is working on a Blu-ray camcorder is nothing new. As CNET's News.com reported in October of last year, Hitachi showed mock-ups of some Blu-ray camcorder designs at the Japanese trade show Ceatec. At the time, the company said that it planned to have such a camcorder on the market in one to two years. Kazuto Shimagami, senior manager in the … Read more

Earlier this year, JVC released the Everio GZ-HD7, an ambitious high-definition hard drive camcorder. Apparently it wasn't quite enough, because JVC just announced a smaller, less expensive follow-up to the HD7, the Everio GZ-HD3.

Strikingly similar to the HD7, the HD3 uses the same 3-chip sensor configuration and the same 60GB hard drive as its bigger brother. Unlike the HD7's 10x Fujinon lens, though, the HD3 uses a new 10x Konica Minolta-branded lens. The HD3 crams all of these neat features into a smaller, lighter body, measuring over an inch shorter and weighing a fifth of a pound … Read more

If you ever wanted to videotape your pets fighting to Romanian dance music while on a trampoline, Sony has a new pocket camcorder for you. Sony's NSC-GC1 Net-sharing CAM is targeted specifically at the YouTube crowd, with a low enough price tag and just enough power to throw clips up on the Web. The Net-sharing CAM can shoot video ranging from QVGA (320x240) at 15 frames per second to VGA (640x480) at 30 frames per second. It records to Sony's Memory Stick DUO memory cards, so if you already have a PlayStation Portable or a Sony Cyber-shot digital … Read more

Akihabara News made a big oopsie and posted a story about JVC's forthcoming Everio GZ-HD3. Though the page was quickly pulled, camcorderinfo.com managed to snatch the photo and a few details. A JVC spokesman admitted to me that Akihabara News had signed a nondisclosure agreement for information about the product, which provided a tacit admission that the product really exists and isn't just a rumor.

According to camcorderinfo.com, the HD3 will record HD video at only 1,440x1,080 in JVC's standard MPEG-2 TS format; the GZ-HD7 offers 1,920x1,080 "FHD" video, … Read more

Six months after it teased us with its CES announcement of the SC-HMX10 high-definition camcorder, Samsung has released more details of the model, which is slated to hit stores this September. The AVCHD-based camcorder offers 720p recording to either an SDHC memory card or the camera's built-in 8GB of flash memory. A 1.5-megapixel CCD sensor and 10x optical zoom lens team up to capture footage, while a 2.7-inch LCD gives a view of what you're shooting. There's no optical image stabilization, but the camcorder's electronic image stabilization should help minimize the effects of your … Read more

The Sanyo Xacti E1 is the world's first waterproof digital camcorder, the E1 is ideal for water sports enthusiasts and can record high-quality video to a depth of 5 feet. Not exactly ideal for scuba diving unless you're going in your pool, but none the less for all you jet ski, water ski crazed individuals it is probably the ideal companion out on the lake. It's also ideal for winter sports, as the compact design can easily fit in a jacket pocket for when you hit the ski slopes.

The camcorder records MPEG-4 video to SD memory … Read more

Panasonic plans to announce new digital cameras and high-definition video cameras at a July 17 event in New York, according to an invitation.

The company didn't share further details. But perhaps we'll see more about the new lower-end Panasonic digital SLR geared toward consumers.

Panasonic's current DMC-L1 is a midrange SLR (single-lens reflex) model with a midrange price, but the company could use something to go up against the models from Olympus, Canon, Pentax and Nikon that cost hundreds of dollars less.

Experts may take years to examine and analyze the latest purported video of the Loch Ness Monster, henceforth known as "Nessie." But our crack analytic team, to wit CNET editor Lori Grunin, has identified the camcorder used to take that footage.

Lori took a look at the Scottish TV video of the cameraman and his sighting. After examining the video of the camcorder, she tells us it's an antique Sony DCR-TRV130E (an old Digital 8 model). At any rate, the camcorder is far more modern than the legends of Nessie, which go back more than 2,500 … Read more