Stoking the Blu-ray camcorder rumor mill
Based on a post on a Japanese Web site, Gizmodo has decided to put its rumor mill into high gear, speculating about the possibility of Blu-ray camcorders from Hitachi.
Hitachi's possible Blu-ray designs were shown under glass at last year's Ceatec show in Japan.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Based on a post on a Japanese Web site, Gizmodo has decided to put its rumor mill into high gear, speculating that Blu-ray camcorders will be available by the end of the year. Of course, news that Hitachi is working on a Blu-ray camcorder is nothing new. As CNET's News.com reported in October of last year, Hitachi showed mock-ups of some Blu-ray camcorder designs at the Japanese trade show Ceatec. At the time, the company said that it planned to have such a camcorder on the market in one to two years. Kazuto Shimagami, senior manager in the company's storage products division added, "I hope it is one year." If Shimagami gets his wish, then that would put the company on track to bring the technology to market before 2007 is out.
The designs showed then--the same ones pictured in Gizmodo's article and shown here--are based on 8cm Blu-ray discs. This would put a Blu-ray camcorder in line with DVD camcorders, which use 8cm discs rather than the larger versions used by home players and various video game consoles.
According to our contact at Hitachi's PR company, Hitachi hasn't set any official release dates for its Blu-ray camcorders. Given that, Gizmodo's post doesn't really add any new information, which makes it more of a distraction than anything else. In the electronics world, when a company talks about a product that will never make it to store shelves, we call it "vaporware." When Gizmodo posts items like this one, it comes across as nothing more than a vapor blog.
