Hitachi DZMV380A DVD-RAM/R Camcorder with 2.5-inch LCD, 10x Optical Zoom, and Remote Control

by Hitachi

Product Details

Product Manual [5.74mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 2.4 x 3.7 inches ; 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000095R9U
• Item model number: DZ-MV380A
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,329 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 14, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Hitachi has single-handedly changed home movies forever. These camcorders record directly on to a DVD disc so you can access instantly any scene on the disc, resulting in savings endless hours of rewinding and fast-forwarding. This camcorder can fit into your pocket, similar to a traditional size still camera. You even have a choice as to how you record your memories.With the introduction of the world's first DVD camcorder, Hitachi has advanced the world of home video recording. In fact, Hitachi won an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for this accomplishment. Instead of tape, the DVD Camcorder records to an 8cm optical DVD disc. It automatically writes to blank areas of the disc, with no worry of accidental erasure. You have direct access to any scene or still photo on the disc-no frantic fast-forwarding or rewinding to play back what you've just recorded.

DVD-RAM allows you to record and erase scenes on a disc as many as 100,000 times, about average for most doting dads. Each recording is stored as a scene that you can edit, apply special transitions to, and compile with other scenes into custom playlists. All performed within the camera.You can even record in DVD-R, a write-once format, so you can remove the disc from the camera and play it back on your home DVD player.

The DZMV380A represents a revolutionary idea in home movies. This camcorder records directly to DVD, you can remove the DVD-R disc from the camcorder and immediately play it on your home DVD player. It also records to DVD-RAM (rewritable) discs. Because a DVD enables direct access to any previously recorded scene, it eliminates the clumsy fast-forwarding and rewinding of tape. While providing excellent video quality, the MegaPixel CCD image sensor with 1.0 million pixels for high-resolution still photos.

Product Highlights

• Miniature Size: Similar to traditional size still camera
• DVD-RAM Format: Record, erase and re-record on same disc up to 100,000 times
• DVD-R Format: Compatible for instant playback, on most home DVD players
• Records on DVD: No more tapes, no accidental erasure of previously-recorded material
• Direct Access to Scenes: No endless waiting for the camcorder to rewind or fast-forward
• Disc Navigation: Enables direct, immediate access to any scene, plus a host of in-camera editing features
• Advanced Stable Pix Electronic Image Stabilization: Produces smoother shots during camcorder movement
• 2.5" Color LCD panel: Provides a clear picture during shooting
• Up to 2 Hours of Recording: Significantly longer than digital videotape
• Still Photo Mode: Takes up to 1,998 still photos (DVD-RAM)
• USB 2.0 Connection: For high-speed data transfer between the camcorder and a personal computer
• New SD Card Recording

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great camcorder, July 8, 2003

By 

JS "joesquid" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hitachi DZMV380A DVD-RAM/R Camcorder with 2.5-inch LCD, 10x Optical Zoom, and Remote Control (Electronics)

I have had this model for a month now and am pleased with the performance. Recording with DVD-RAM is a snap and editing is just as easy. I have a ... Panasonic dvd player s-31 and I can plop the DVD-RAM directly from the camcorder into the dvd player and watch my movies and view my photos. My first generation JVC DVD player spits the disc out and swears at me in Japanese.

It comes with sonic MyDvd which makes pretty decent DVDs. It also comes with a program that can convert the camcorder files into Mpeg files. Once they are mpeg files you can use them in any decent video editing software. I usually edit the video files and then use Sonic to burn a DVD. I have not tried VCD and considering the poor quality of a VCD, I don't know why someone would want to.

As far as video quality, I used it to tape my daughter surfing and the quality was excellent. The optical zoom is great but the digital zoom pixilates heavily at anything higher than 40x. I have tested the different recording formats (std, fine and xtra) and I now only use the highest format as the other ones show up with scanning lines on my 40 inch TV. In auto mode it sucks at low light...until I manually set it to low light mode and everything showed up but had a brownish hue.

The media is still more expensive than DV tapes... At highest quality a single DVD-RAM holds a half an hour (15 min each side). I have not tried the DVD-R as I am having a hard time justifying spending [the money] to record to a disk and not be able to do any post editing. The discs are nice as each time I turn the record on and off it creates a small movie that is accessed much like a scene menu on a regular DVD. On a DVD-RAM, I can then edit it, add transition effects or I can delete it. No more rewinding tape. Let me write that again - no more rewinding tape. That has to be the nicest thing about this toy - no more tape.

It only has a USB connection - no fire wire. I am running XP and connection to the computer was a snap.

It takes 1 mega pixel photos which are the quality of, well, 1 mega pixel photos. I have an old 2.5 mega pixel Olympus that obviously blows it away but in a pinch it makes decent small pics.

Would I buy this again? Yes. So far the overall quality is on par with its peers and not having to muck with tape is a big benefit for me. It loses 1 star for the media recording length and price of the DVD discs.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great hardware, horrible software, August 12, 2003

By 

Jim Peschke (Harvard, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hitachi DZMV380A DVD-RAM/R Camcorder with 2.5-inch LCD, 10x Optical Zoom, and Remote Control (Electronics)

This camcorder is what many have waited for: consumer grade digital video without tape. The decision to use mainly DVD-R or DVD-RAM is best made early. For me, DVD-R is still too expensive to use. DVD-RAM allows reuse, as well as in-camera editing. But don't be fooled by this editing capability, this camera would be extremely frustrating without a computer for offline processing...

Which brings us to the bundled software. As a Mac user, and knowing that video is still very Mac-friendly, the Windows-only software was a grave disappointment. Even within the Windows environment, this software is still quite clumsy. The DVD-RAM disks require drivers to read (Included Windows drivers seem to work well). The video files are *.VRO, which is an MPEG-2 variant many decoders cannot parse, including QuickTime.

Still the bundled software allows rudimentary DVD editing and some degree of MPEG transcoding. For serious offline editing, you'll need an expensive suite of software and a good computer.

Despite its software limitations, this camera is an excellent device for capturing source material. Its three DVD-RAM resolution modes, STD/FINE/EXTRA provide a useful set of tradeoffs. Don't use the STD mode unless 60 minute continuity is essential. My 4 megapixel still camera means its unlikely I'll ever know how well the DZMV-380A operates in still mode.

In short, if you're serious about DVD content creation and have the computer tools and expertise, this camera is second to none. But the casual user will be disappointed at the expense of DVD-R disks and the complexity of using DVD-RAM.

A Five-Star camera bundled with Two-Star software. Four stars.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Total Garbage, December 10, 2004

By 

Paul Sill (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hitachi DZMV380A DVD-RAM/R Camcorder with 2.5-inch LCD, 10x Optical Zoom, and Remote Control (Electronics)

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.