Blu-ray First With Camcorder

Hitachi has just announcedits plans to bring a Blu-ray Disc camcorder to market in Japan by end of August, and in the U.S. later this year. This makes Blu-ray the first of the high-def disc formats to gain a camcorder; the HD DVD hasn't had any vendors discuss plans for a camcorder--at least, not yet.

That's an advantage to Blu-ray: Self-created content is going to be a big driver of the next-gen high-definition discs. In this video-crazed, YouTube-era, more and more people are capturing video. The catch is, when you look at some of that video on a high-def screen, the image quality often doesn't hold up. For the same reason consumers want high-definition movies for their HDTVs, so too will they clamor for high-def camcorder content. (Remember the grainy, blurry cell phone video that surfaced of singer Beyonce taking a spill?) If you're capturing once-in-a-lifetime visuals, might as well do so at the maximum quality you can--sooner, rather than later.

When Hitachi's camcorder comes available, Imation and Verbatim plan to offer the 8 centimeter Blu-ray BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) discs that will work in camcorder such as Hitachi's. Imation's TDK Life on Record media, as it's being called, will be available in September for $25 (for a 7.5GB BD-R), and $34.99 (for a 7.5GB BD-RE). The discs are rated to capture 60 minutes of 1080i video.

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