Digital Trends

Everyone loves hybrids — no matter if it’s the Toyota Prius or Hitachi’s newest camcorders. One can easily see the benefit of a hybrid car that gets high mileage by using gas and electric motors. The pluses of a DVD camcorder combined with a hard disc drive (HDD) are not quite as obvious or Earth-friendly. Still, the idea of recording for 110 minutes in XTRA mode on an 8GB HDD and then burning that footage onto blank, 3-inch DVDs in the same device is pretty enticing. That last step — taking video off the hard drive — is one of the biggest issues facing HDD-based camcorders. So, did Hitachi create the magic bullet or did it fire a dud? Let’s check it out…