Hitachi Says Blu-Ray Camcorder in Two Years

October 3, 2006 - The HD announcements continue to roll out from Tokyo’s CEATEC show as Hitachi stated plans to release a Blu-Ray camcorder within the next two years. In an interview with News.com, Hitachi provided details that the camcorder will use 8cm DVDs and an accompanying burner. Despite the fact that these technologies do not yet exist , an Hitachi representative stated that “I hope it is in one year.”

Hitachi is one of the companies backing Blu-Ray in its battle with HD DVD. So far, however, no company has announced plans to implement either format in a camcorder. Earlier this year, Sony and Panasonic created AVCHD in an effort to marry HD video and DVD media with technologies that could be brought to market more quickly. The first camcorders using AVCHD have already been released: Sony’s HDR-UX1 and HDR-SR1. Panasonic is teasing their AVCHD model at CEATEC, but has not named a price or release date.

Currently, Blu-Ray uses only 12cm discs, which can hold between 25GB and 50GB at data. An 8cm disc, the size used in camcorders, would almost certainly hold less, but would far exceed that of standard (non Blu-Ray) discs. The News.com interview stated that the companies involved in Blu-Ray are “currently fleshing out specs.” Blu-Ray backers include Sony, Matsushita (Panasonic), and Philips.

A Blu-Ray camcorder could mean a huge advance in the field of camcorders. At present, the consumer faces two choices: a tape-based HDV format, which is bound to realtime capture, and AVCHD, which is heavily compressed in an H.264/MPEG-4 format. The high capacity of Blu-Ray media would allow for more footage with less compression.

Hitachi did have a mock-up of the proposed camcorder on display at CEATEC (see images), but has announced no product name, price, or additional specs.