Back in January, Hitachi released the BD9H Blu-ray camcorder, and it's taken just six months for the next generation to come along. The DZ-BD10H takes the same core design, but squeezes it into a slightly smaller package. It's still a full HS palmcorder, recording to 8-cm BD, DVD-R/RW/RAM or a 30GB HDD but this time the sensor is a 7-megapixel CMOS and the camera has the ability to write stills and movies to SD/SDHC cards too.

The optics remain largely unchanged, with a 10x zoom but this time coming with an optical anti-shake system. There's also face recognition for exposure and focus automation, and the same Picture Master image processing tech built in.

In HX mode, at full 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, the cam manages a 15Mbps bitrate and fits about 4.5 hours of recording onto the 30GB drive, or an hour onto a 8-cm BD. At 720 x 480 resolution, in SX mode (9 Mbps) it'll fit 20 minutes onto a DVD. Its battery will shoot for about 80 minutes, and the whole package weighs about 1.27 pounds and measures 3.1 x 5.5 x 3.4 inches.

Available in Japan at first, from August 9th for around $1,400. [AVWatch]

Tags: blu-ray | camcorders | cameras | digital cameras | hitachi