Once someone comes up with a hybrid HDD/DVD camcorder that actually has good video quality, they are going to make a mint. Sadly, however, this is not the case with one of the first of such camcorders … at least according to CNET’s Hitachi DZ-HS300A review.
Sure being able to record hours of footage to HDD and then easily dub directly to DVD is a great idea, and serves the needs of many consumers perfectly, but when the quality is as poor as it looks in CNET’s review you have to step back and reevaluate.
… the HS300A is your typical budget camcorder, and that’s bad news for a hard drive/DVD-based model. Its 1/6-inch 680,000-pixel sensor records 340,000-pixel video, which simply isn’t enough for the MPEG-2 compression algorithm to encode without significant degradation. Severe edge crawl and jaggies, fringing, and a variety of false-color artifacts–especially around light sources–render the video close to unusable. Even for YouTube.
We’ll have to wait and see if other companies jump on the bandwagon, which will hopefully mean a jump in image quality. Until then, if you really want the capabilities of the Hitachi DZ-HS300A I’d say go for it, otherwise it may be wise to wait.
