It's difficult to translate into suitable words how I feel about this camcorder. To set the stage, I run a software development company and consider myself extremely comfortable with technology. So I'm no amature user of video and software.

This camcorder produces fairly decent image quality in it's middle of the road resolution, but you can only fit about 30 minutes of record time on one of the min-DVD disks, if you want more time on one disk, you need to record at the lowest resolution, which is OK, but not ideal. That is somewhat disappointing, but not the biggest problem.

The REAL problem with this camcorder is the crappy software it ships with and the proprietary format Hitachi records the movie images on the DVD. You see, the movies as they are recorded on the DVD are not in a standard movie format such as MPEG that can be read into any other standard video editing device. The ONLY way you can download and view, edit, and customize your video images is by using their software...So this software requires you to first connect and download all your video from the DVD camcorder to your harddrive and convert it into the MPEG format if you want to use another program like Roxio Media Creator. This connect, convert and download can take several hours and usually, for a full DVD, requires a battery change. (It requires a battery change because the DC/AV connectivity for the camera also sucks, you can not plug the camcorder into the wall, but rather you have to plug the camcorder into the battery charger which then plugs into the wall, a real pain since you have to have all the gear at hand just to download your movies to your computer.)

After you download it of course, you now need to make sure you can create a DVD from your computer that can be read by a DVD player so you can playback your movies. Now, I know, the reason you buy a DVD camcorder is so that you can just pop out your DVDS and play them on the TV in your DVD player! The real world though is more like this, you record dozens of different times on a DVD, like with your new baby, we turn it on for 5 minutes to capture a moment, then turn it off....So ultiamtely, you want to be able to easily edit the entire video so you can create cut-aways, delete junk you recorded by accident etc, so you really want a camcorder to be easy to download and edit. This is not the model for you, and frankly, we're selling ours on EBay and buying a Sony.

FYI, Hitachi technocal support sucks. and FYI, their proprietary software that came with the unit will NOT work at all if ROXIO media creator 5.0 or higher is installed on your computer, so if you, like us, have this program, you'll find yourself spending hours trying to figure out why you can't access your DVD camcorder to download images because their software simply won't work. Total joke.

Take a pass on this one.

My wife bought me this camera for Christmas. After experiencing video cameras for the better part of 2 decades (remember the gigantic, tv-camera-looking VHS cameras?!), I am elated that technology has come to this. So refreshingly simple, and so integral to one's peace-of-mind in knowing that the clips will endure until our sun burns-out (hope my descendants hang-on to my dear, recorded memories!). I find myself using the RAM disks more, since I can transfer the individual clips to my computer, and edit or arrange as I see fit; the -R disks are a 1-shot deal----what you tape is what you finalize at the end is what you watch on your DVD player. But even those are handy, if you want to simply move seamlessly from taking the disk out of the camera and straight into the DVD player. And even with the -R disks, you'll still get "menu chapter points" on the finished product---separated by each start and stop of the recording, and by date of the recording session. I find the quality great---even the "standard" quality (lowest setting) was great, when we recorded a gig that my band played at (low-light conditions and all). The RAM is great because you can record over and over and over---just buy 1 or 2 $20 disks, and if you transfer to computer, and thence to regular DVD disk, you don't need to buy too many additional. The only real problem has been stocking-up on some of these blank mini-disks----all the cold, unfriendly mega stores (circuit city, best buy, compUSA) always seem to be out, or low on supply. I resorted to ordering them from a company on-line.

A great camera with many wonderful features. The manual is chocked full of information, all except the most important feature: Format your disc before recording!!!! From the get-go with DVD-R, it prompted me to format the disc. But with DVD-Ram, It did not tell me to format the disc at the start. I took movies of my trip to Europe and was able to view them back through the finder/display. However, when I got to the end of the disc, I was prompted with a notice to "format the disc now" and that all video will be lost if I do format!! I couldn't believe I had to lose all my Europe footage all because I did not format the disc BEFORE I started recording. London Eye - gone! Meusse-Argonne Cemetary in France - gone! Hitachi could not help me. Again, great camera but Format first!!!

this camcorder is phenominal. i was skeptical about buying something other than sony but i'm glad the hitachi salesman told me why this camera is better. let me explain.

sony dvd cameras are on there first generation (they are just coming to the market). This hitachi camera is a third generation model. this basically means that what consumers didnt like in the past has been implemented into the newer models. anyway, the price is a steal if you ask me. you can buy a digital camera for a few hundred bucks or you can spend a little more and get this wonderful toy.

okay now the nitty gritty. this camera can take pictures onto sd memory cars or onto dvd-r disc themselves. you can insert dvd-r media into this camera, record your movie, finalize it and then pop it into a dvd player to watch it all in a few minutes. talk about convient. you can also upload your movies to a PC and do special effects or whatever, then copy it back to the camera so you do not need a dvd burner on your computer!

The camera is very light weight and very portable. It is such a breeze to use. you can record a bunch of different shots and easily replay them on your camera. its like changing tracks on a cd player vs a tape player (other cameras) where you must fast foward or rewind to find the right scene. Its almost instant on this camera.

I bought this camera so i could take videos of my family and mail it back home to relatives so they can just pop it into there dvd players and enjoy! it does the above wonderfully. Keep in mind what you are getting when you buy this camcorder. You are getting THE LATEST in technology at an affordable price, it has a digital camera function (so to speak), dvd recording for very crisp pictures and sound, very small and portable for travelling and basically all the features you want in a camcorder. Did i mention it has a color view finder? This is very useful when trying to determine what to focus the camera on, if you arent using the color swivel screen of course.

i would recommend this camera to all of my friends, relatives and all of you! the picture quality is remarkable, dolby digital sound (awesome) and its just a great camera. Never again will i buy a sony camcorder while these are on the market :) dont waste your money on other crappy camcorders, get this!

This is a GREAT digital camcorder: small, light, and fairly easy to use. Long battery life (about 2 hours record time). Yes, it is expensive. But after realizing I never would "get around to" transferring our tapes to DVDs on the computer, I couldn't resist the convenience of having our home movies automatically recorded on DVD media. Unless you have all the time and PC gear to transfer, edit and burn DVDs from a tape camcorder, the extra cost of this direct-to-DVD camcorder is WELL worth it.

We were happy to find that our 4-year old Sony DVD player has no problems playing back the finalized DVD-R disks. (Anyone who claims they can't view -R discs made with this camera on computers or DVD players is simply didn't read the manual!) The DVD-R disc has to be "finalized" before anything besides the camera can read it, unless you use the more expensive DVD-RW media (which can go from camera to PC w/o finalizing; our home player doesn't support DVD-RW media). Another drawback is you must be plugged into AC power to finalize a DVD-R; I guess this is a reliability issue, not a technical requirement. If your battery were to die in the middle of "finalizing", the disc would be toast. Better safe than sorry.

For playback on a home DVD player, it takes a few times to get used to removing the 3" disks from the plastic carriers they come in, but it's no big deal (you must remove the mini DVD disk from the carrier to put it in a player or PC drive). Also, you only get 30 minutes per disk in high quality mode, but the disks are so light and tiny you can have several blanks in your pocket for recording long events. One thing different from tape camcorders is when you first power on the camera. Depending on how much of the disk has already been used, the time it takes for the camera to be "ready" can be much longer than a tape camera. But the delays in start-up are more than offset by the ability to navigate thru a menu of thumbnail stills of each "scene" you already shot when doing playback on the camera - something you just can't do with tape camcorders. Unfortunately, the finalized disc navigation screens just have selections showing text bars with date the scene was shot - you don't get the nice thumbnail stills you saw in the camera's playback navigation screens. But it's still great pop the finalized disk in the home player, click and play the scene you want immediately w/o having to fast-forward like a tape. As for "still" picture quality, it's pretty mediocre, but I bought this for video (I already have a good still camera). Camera came with a PC transfer cable and software, but since I'm using DVD-R media, I don't really need it. Manual says you can use the cable and software to edit DVD-RW media, or burn from PC to the DVD drive in the camera. Not sure how important a feature this really is.

This Hitachi camcorder is truly a piece of junk. I lost the video of some of the best moments of my life thanks to Hitachi's crappy technology. the mini DVD gets corrupted very easily and the content cannot be retrieved anymore.

The camcorder itself is reasonably user-friendly, compact and lightweight...but BEWARE!!! The software that comes with it is absolutely worthless if your computer isn't old as dirt! And don't expect any help from Hitachi - you'll never get a response from anyone. Many great memories are now going to be lost thanks to this joke of a camcorder/software package. We're going to sell this piece of junk and get a REAL camcorder from a REAL company like Sony.

This is the worst camcorder ever. It is not easy to download or burn it. But you can watch your video only on camcorders LCD(nowhere else). I returned it back. It was releaf. I will not buy any Hitachi brand anymore.