Just when the market is moving to flash based storage devices due to the low cost of storage, Hitachi is set to announce the world’s first Blu-ray HD camcorder under its curious ‘Wooo’ brand. No model names or even individual spec break downs have been provided.
However Hitachi is promising Full HD 1080p recording via a whopping 5.3 megapixel CMOS sensor. The problem in moving to a proprietary based platform like Blu-ray over flash memory is that one is often tied to buying Blu-ray discs which per gigabyte are far more expensive than flash.
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The new camcorder only holds a reduced size 8cm Blu-ray and DVD discs, the former providing 7GB of space – less than a standard dual layer DVD (though it is at least physically smaller). Reduced size DVDs will hold just 1.4GB.
Anyway, at least the high compression Mpeg4/H.264 format is the recording standard of choice so models may well shoot for longer than expected and – if you do run out – you can simply swap out one expensive next gen disc for another expensive next gen disc.
Hitachi’s latest Wooo’s (which I’m saying with a great amount of sarcasm at this point) will be out soon with the company targeting an imminent, if not ambiguous September launch date.
Second gen products are usually much better than first generation products so I would highly recommend to any consumer to wait before you dive into a Blu-ray Camcorder. By then you will have the opportunity to compare the cost of a Blu-ray camcorder Vs a high gigabyte flash based camcorder.
