Sneak Peek: JVC GZ-HD3 Tapeless Camcorder
July 13, 2007 by Lauren
JVC was kind enough to flash us a little demo of their up-and-coming GZ-HD3 HD hard disk camcorder. What did we find out? It's a small enough body with a relatively large lense, essentially taking up the entire front portion of the camera. It's stated to have 60 delicious GB of hard disk space, though it can also record onto SDHC memory cards if you need even more space. The included 60GB means five hours of HD quality film, though it isn't using the full 1920 x 1080 HD. Instead, we're provided with 1440 x 1080 in an MPEG-2 TS file type. Nonetheless, it should still be a beautiful, HD crispy-crunch in every bite.
This is, in fact, the little bro of the GZ-HD7. It's much smaller and should actually cost about $500 less. It's capability to record onto HDD or to the SDHC memory cards in growing quite popular, in a sense. Hitachi, for example, was successful with their DVD/HDD camcorders. Also, Panasonic offers two models that record to HDD or memory card. Is this trend a bad thing? Of course not. More memory is getting bigger and bigger, and that is fantastic if you ask me.
Despite some great features, the GZ-HD3 isn't pinned as a wonderful value or even the easiest to use. At the same time, the GZ-HD7 went against several camcorder competitors and came out on top with better handling and manual controls. The problem with it was its difficult-to-work-with 1920 x 1080 file types. The GZ-HD3 is actually limited to HDV file formats, which in theory would relieve editing concerns. Then, add on the blessings of its big brother, right? Nonetheless, consumers aren't convinced that the quality will be up to par with Sony or Canon.
Other than this information, not much about the camera was released. We don't have any information regarding the price, release date, or in which markets the camcorder will sell. All we can do is wait, and hope that the little bro camera goes over well. Good luck to you, GZ-HD3.
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