First Look: Hitachi DZ-MV580E DVD CAM

The idea of a camcorder which records video straight to writable DVD seems quite sensible -- most of us have DVD players at home, and this approach cuts out the time consuming process of downloading the footage to a PC and burning a disk.

However, we had problems with this Hitachi from the start. Someone, or something, had salivated (or similar) onto the blank DVD-R bundled with the camera, causing the Hitachi to reject the disc -- not a problem we've ever had with tape based cameras.

Washing the DVD-R solved the problem, but the incident reflected poorly on the design. Your DVD-Rs must be placed into a disk caddy before they’re loaded. There’s a gaping hole in one side of the caddy which exposes a quarter of the disc to grubby fingers. A simple slot loading mechanism in the camera would have made the casing neater and done away with the flimsy-feeling caddy loading mechanism.

Once the Hitachi recognised our freshly bathed and dried DVD-R, recording was straightforward. DVD-Rs must be formatted by the camera before they’re ready to use, but this process only takes a few seconds to complete.

We haven’t plugged the Hitachi into a TV to check the true quality of recordings yet, but judging from the on-board LCD, everything looks quite clear in decent lighting conditions. The blank DVD-R claims a 30 minute record time, which seems a little miserly considering the huge capacity of MiniDV or even the creaky old man that is Hi8.

We’ll be taking this Hitachi out on the road over the next few days because we’re particularly interested in how the camera will deal with vibration and shock. Not because we’re feeling sadistic (particularly), but because DVD CAMs have a reputation for corrupting chunks of video when subjected to sudden movement. Expect a full review soon. -CS

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