Hitachi DZ-HS301E review

The long running reign of MiniDV tape has recently been challenged by two different video storage formats: DVD and hard disk.

DVD camcorders offer direct to disc recording, which means easy playback in any compatible DVD player. Alternatively, hard disk camcorders are capable of storing large amounts of video without the hassle of hunting for a blank tape every time you want to capture some footage. This Hitachi camcorder goes one better by including both a DVD writer and a hard disk in one device.

Jack of all trades

Despite cramming in all that technology, it's still similar in size and shape to many of the DVD and MiniDV camcorders on the market. On top there's an accessory shoe for mounting lights or microphones. It's not powered, however, so any accessories will need to have their own batteries. A front flap opens to reveal a microphone socket and a USB port for connecting to a PC, while the AV output supports both composite and S-Video playback.

Just like any other digital camcorder or camera, the Hitachi has a CCD, or image sensor, which works a little like a TFT monitor in reverse. Rather than giving out coloured light to produce a picture, a CCD absorbs it to record the moving images you're filming. The larger the CCD, the greater the amount of detail that can be captured. However, the Hitachi has only a 1/5in sensor CCD - barely bigger than the 1/6in CCDs commonly found on budget camcorders that cost half the price.

Wide of the mark

The DZ-HS301E can record in widescreen and the LCD display is proportioned appropriately. However, the CCD sensor isn't actually widescreen itself. Instead, it simply doesn't use the top and bottom of the sensor when creating widescreen video, which means that you end up losing image quality. The camcorder also uses electronic image stabilisation to give a steadier hand-held shot. Although this is a welcome feature, it wastes yet more pixels from the left and right of the sensor to do its job.

Captured video is encoded to compressed MPEG-2 files as it's shot and you can select whether to store it on the hard disk or burn it directly to DVD. One major limitation is that the mini DVDs can only store 20 minutes of high quality footage, whereas the hard disk can store a whopping two hours. The battery mounted on the back lasted for an acceptable one and a half hours when recording to hard disk, but only one hour and six minutes with DVD-R.

Image quality was acceptable in decent lighting conditions, like outdoors or in a well lit room, with bright colours and reasonable detail. However, in low light conditions, its small CCD left it struggling, with lots of noise and fuzz appearing in the footage. The results also suffer from compression issues due to the MPEG-2 video format. This degrades the quality of the video and though not particularly unpleasant normally, it becomes very obvious when lighting conditions are poor or you're trying to capture fast moving subjects.

To DVD or not to DVD?

It's a neat touch that video can be copied from the hard disk direct onto a DVD that you can play in a standard DVD player. In fact, given the limited 20 minutes of recording time that a DVD provides, we can't see what else you'd use the drive for, unless you'd filled the hard disk and had absolutely no choice. Alternatively, you can connect the camcorder to your PC and use the supplied software to transfer the video clips. Looking at the hard disk from Windows, you can see that the video files are stored as one long file, so you can just drag-and-drop this if you prefer. It's just a pity that clips aren't stored as individual files like on Sony's and JVC's hard disk camcorders.