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DVD Camcorders:
The Next Generation Making movies couldn’t get any easier.
by Stewart Wolpin 
The Hitachi DZ-MV580A In case you haven’t noticed, DVD players are everywhere. Not only do they offer amazing video quality, they’re incredibly cheap, costing as little as $30. It’s only logical that DVD camcorders would appear next. You shoot your video, pop out a 3-inch disc, and pop it into your home player or notebook. Piece of cake. At least, that’s the concept. The reality isn’t quite so neat. With DVD camcorders, you must first finalize the disc in camera before you can play it. (A final disc-building process that creates a thumbnail menu of scenes and a table of contents is necessary for a write-once DVD-R before a DVD player will be able to play it; DVD-RW discs don’t require finalization). hen there’s the matter of competing formats. The second-generation Sony DCR-DVD201 ($1,000) records in the fully-compatible DVD-R/RW format, while the fourth-generation Hitachi DZ-MV580A ($899) and the virtually identical Panasonic VDR-M70PP ($899) record to either DVD-Rs or the much less player-friendly DVD-RAM disks. Keep in mind that DVD-R discs can fit only about 30 minutes of footage at the highest quality, versus 60 minutes for the more popular digital format, MiniDV. Finally, both the Hitachi and Panasonic require that you use a plastic disc caddy to protect the disc. With these models, DVD’s supposed plug-and-play advantage loses some of its luster. The three devices we tested are smaller, lighter, and less expensive than last year’s models. Are these improvements enough to make any of these DVD camcorders worth buying? Let’s find out. Read about the Hitachi DZ-MV580A & Panasonic VDR-M70PP
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