Unlike the all-weather camcorder from Sanyo that we loved, the Hitachi camcorder offers something never seen before. It allows the consumer to choose the media on which he or she wants to record the video. It could either be DVD or HDD. The device which is code named DZ-HS300A ; will also support several DVD formats such as DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and +RW. What truly takes the cake is that a SD card slot is also present which lets you take still images and record them directly onto the SD card. Unfortunately Hitachi did stumble on one point - the battery life, which lasts for only one hour of recording.

The pricing is rumored to be around $600 but the release date has not yet been decided. The 1 second delay is all that it takes to start the camcorder and begin recording which ensures that those happy memories can be recorded as soon as they occur - naturally.

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