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The Japanese company, Hitachi has introduced its new Blu-ray camcorder which the company claiming it to be the world’s first Blu-ray camcorder. This blu-ray video camera features an 8cm disc drive bundled with an 5.3 megapixel CMOS sensor that allows you to record for up to 1 hour of full HD (1,920 x 1,080 resolution) video. It also comprises an LSI chipset that can handle the appropriate 1080p H.264 HD compression.

Currently without a codename, it will record to three-inch BD-R/RE discs, each capable of storing 7GB — substantially less than the 25 to 50GB of full-size Blu-Ray, but still more than comparably-sized DVD media. DVD discs inserted into the camera will only allow playback.

The camera is further equipped with AVC/H.264 MPEG-4 encoding for better HD compression, and MPEG-2 serves as an SD fallback. The mini BD writer is really the key to the new camcorder and can handle BD-R/RE disks, as well as DVD-RAM/R/RW for the old-skool.

Hitachi is unsure of the exact release date for the camcorder, but it should be out in Japan between fall and the end of the year.