Hitachi’s Blu-ray camcorder, take two

Hitachi didn’t exactly impress with its first stab at a Blu-ray camcorder, the DZ-BD7H, so it’s back with the updated DZ-BD9H. Will it fix the ills we found on the first model?

Like its predecessor it still records ‘Full HD’, 1920x1080i video to either hard drive or Mini BD disc, but now it gets an improved 5.3-megapixel CMOS sensor and heavily tweaked ‘Picture Master’ processing.

The hard drive’s also been doubled to a more respectable 60GB, giving up to nine hours of best-quality recording plus around another hour to Mini BD.

We’ll find out what, if any improvements those changes bring with a full review in the future. Of course, if you’d rather skip Blu-ray altogether there’s also the newly announced DZ-HD90, which does the same job using just the 60GB hard drive. Your choice, high-def fans.

Essentials

Hitachi DZ-BD9H, DZ-HD90

Price: TBA (¥180,000, ¥140,000 in Japan)

On sale: TBA (February 12, March 1 in Japan)

Contact: Hitachi

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