Hitachi's Wooo DZ-HS503 hybrid DVD / HDD camcorder with 2x dubbing

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jan 25th 2007 at 9:09AM

Hitachi's Wooo DZ-HS503 hyrbid camcorder just busted out a can of Wooopass (har!) on the competition. Yeah, "hybrid" as in it records to both an internal 30GB hard disk drive and 8-centimeter DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD+RW discs. It will even record direct from that HDD to DVDs for 2x PC-less dubbing action. It appears to be the Japanese version of the DZ-HS500A mentioned in passing by Hitachi at CES. Inside you'll find a 3.31 megapixel CCD (suitable for 2.18 megapixel video or 3.05 megapixel stills), a lesser 10x optical zoom instead of 30x since the Japanese tend to be less creepy than Americans (ok, maybe not), a 2.7-inch 120,000 pixel TFT LCD, and even an SD slot for photographs. Expect the HS503 to hit for retail at about ¥140,000 or right around $1,162 -- beaucoup bucks for convenience over the quality of a 3CCD system. Also loosed are the Japanese equivs of the 8GB HDD / DVD hybrid DZ-HS301 and DZ-HS303 camcorders which shall hail by the names DZ-HS403 and DZ-HS401 in the land of the rising sun. Those will pop a bit sooner in February for ¥120,000 ($996) and ¥100,000 ($830), respectively.

[Via Impress]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Tags: camcorder, DZ-HS401, DZ-HS403, dz-hs503, hitachi, wooo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

mathew @ Jan 25th 2007 11:25AM

So what format does it record in? Anything useful, or just MPEG-2 or AVCHD?

Neutral

jedda @ Jan 25th 2007 11:35AM

"suitable for 2.18 megapixel video"

1080p(1920x1080) is only 2.1 megapixels by my count.

Does this thing really record >1080p? Am I missing something here?

Neutral

LuckyCharm2007 @ Jan 25th 2007 5:51PM

I dont like it, 8 centimeter DVD's only have 30 minutes of video , make it record to regular DVD's and i will buy it.

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