Hitachi Blu-ray Camcorder Inches Closer

Hitachi had announced its intentions to launch the first Blu-ray camcorder last year. Now word is percolating that the camcorders could be introduced as early as this fall.

The model (or models) reportedly boasts a 5.3-megapixel CMOS sensor for 1920 by 1080 resolution recording directly onto Blu ray discs.

Sony, Panasonic and Canon are supporting AVCHD, which records HD onto standard DVDs, flash-memory cards and hard drives for playback on select Blu-ray Disc players. That format, Sony told me, was supposed to serve as the means that consumers would record HD home videos for Blu-ray viewing.