Hitachi is bringing high definition camcorders to market, using 8cm Blu-ray media. The 8cm media holds roughly 7GB and the cameras use 5.3 megapixel CMOS sensors co-developed with Altasens to record at a full 1920x1080p 60Hz. The new drive supports 8cm BD-RE/R and DVD-RAM/RW/R. It sounds like recording is to BD only, with DVD media supported for playback, and the drive is a 1x DB drive. Recording is MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for HD and MPEG-2 for SD, and it can also capture JPEG still images. The cameras will hit the market later this year, possibly by the fall – at least in Japan. We’ll probably get them later.
From Impress (Google Translate) – noticed via Gizmodo.
