Camcorder News

In a worldwide announcement today that suspiciously excludes the United States, Canon Inc. announced two DVD recording camcorders, marking their entrance into the hottest sector in the camcorder business. Canon's two new DVD models, the DC10 and DC20, are the smallest DVD camcorders on the market. Canon's entrance to the DVD business has been highly anticipated and rumored for months.

Canon's DC20

The DC10 features a 10x optical zoom and a 1/3.9-in. 1.3 megapixel CCD. The camcorder records video to DVD-R discs and DVD-RW discs with an average bit rate of 9 Megabits per second in MPEG-2 format. The camcorders can record in SP, LP, or XP mode, with each mode having about 1/3rd less quality than the previous one. The camcorder can record stills to the DVD discs but also includes an SD flash media slot. The DC20 adds a 1/4-in. 2.2 megapixel CCD, an RGB Primary Color Filter, flash, and a video light.

The DC20's enhanced CCD allows it to record stills at a resolution of up to 1632 x 1224 pixels, while the DCR-DVD10 maxes out at 1280 x 960. Canon is bringing still features from their consumer camera line into their camcorder lineup, adding multi-point focusing and other metering options to the new DVD camcorders for their photo modes. The camcorders include USB 2.0 for transferring digital stills to a computer.

Canon's DC10

Both models feature 16:9 widescreen recording using Canon's enhanced widescreen mode. The models do not however include a widescreen LCD; both the DC10 and the DC20 feautre a 2.5-in. LCD screen. The new DVD camcorders use electronic image stabilzation.

Both the DC10 and the DC20 feature manual control of shutter spped, exposure, and white balance. Shutter speed on both camcorders can be set from 1/2 a second to 1/5000 of a second. The models have 23 steps of manual exposure control.

The DVD market has become very competitive in 2005, with Sony coming on strong with five models in their lineup. Canon is certainly coming in with less experience and less of a repuation than Sony, Panasonic, and Hitachi, who have been in the market for three, five, and five years, respectively. Sony has had the most success lately with their DVD line which offers a diverse group of products from the $600 DCR-DVD92 to the higher-end $900 DCR-DVD403.

It appears that the DC10 and the DC20 will be matched up against Sony's DCR-DVD203 and DCR-DVD403. Canon's lack of experience in the DVD market may turn out to hurt them. Sony's DCR-DVD203 features a 12x optical zoom and a 1 megapixel CCD, while their DCR-DVD403 features a 10x optical zoom and a large 3 megapixel CCD. Both Sony models also include widescreen LCDs. Panasonic's highest-end DVD model, the VDR-M95, will likely compete with the two new Canon models and features a 1.9 megapixel CCD and a 10x optical zoom.

Canon may be able to find an opening into the market becuase of their models' small size. The new DC10 and DC20 are the smallest DVD camcorders on the market to date. Video performance and low light of existing DVD models has also been inferior when compared to MIniDV models; if Canon can produce a better performing product it might help them win market share from the existing three models. However, Sony's DCR-DVD403 has been aclaimed by this publcation and others for breaking the trend and delivering high quality DVD video in a camcorder.

The models will be available in Japan in mid-September. The lack of any information on a US announcement is surprising, because today's announcement is a worldwide release for Canon which includes Japan and Europe. While DVD camcorder sales have picked up this past year in Japan, they have become a huge force in the US and the US market is proving to be the biggest by far for DVD models.  Canon has not publically released any information on the US availability of the models.

Canon Japan additionally announced two new MiniDV models, the IXY DV S1 and the IXY DV M5. Both models are updates of the line known as Optura in the United States. The new models feature smaller bodies and higher megapixel counts.