Hitachi ups camcorder ante with heavenly hybrids

We have to admit, the phrase ‘hybrid camcorders’ sent a chill to our hearts. Thoughts of tape combined with DVD or maybe a video camera with an MP3 player are enough to cripple our enthusiasm for tech.

Imagine our excitement, then, at these two movie stars. They both pack an 8GB hard disk – good for six hours of recording in standard quality – as well as a DVD burner. So they achieve the holy grail of high storage as well as immediate playback through a DVD player.

This being Hitachi, the burners are multi-format, taking DVD-RAM, DVD±RW and DVD±R. There’s also an SD card slot for storing your still photos, making for a storage hat trick.

The 1.3MP DZ-HS301E (above) is just slightly smaller than the 3.3MP DZ-HS303E (below), and the former has a 15x optical zoom lens while the latter has a 10x optical. Both have 2.7in widescreen LCDs to complement the 16:9 recording.

And don’t worry about the multi-format thing slowing you down – the One Second Quickstart is exactly what it sounds like.

Hitachi DZ-HS303E, DZ-HS301E

Price: Both £TBA

On sale: October, TBA

Contact: Hitachi

Related stories:

Canon revisits bargainville with DVD shooter

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home