Remanufactured Hitachi DZMV550A DVD Camcorder w/18x Optical Zoom
by Hitachi
List Price:
Our Price: $99.99
You Save: $900.00 (90%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Digital Camera
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Customers in the UK,
buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: HitachiProduct features:
- 18x optical zoom lens; 500x digital zoom with Advanced Stable Pix electronic image stabilization
- 2.5-inch color LCD monitor; 113K pixel color viewfinder
- USB 2.0 compatible; Secure Digital (SD) memory card slot; Quick Mode menu
- Powered by DZ-BP14SW rechargeable Lithium-ion battery (included with AC adapter/charger)
- Compact DVD Camcorder and 1 MP digital still camera records to 3-inch DVD-R and DVD-RAM discs
- Corel Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus [OLD VERSION]
- Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum Edition [OLD VERSION]
- Maxell DVD-RWs (635116) (635116)
- Maxell DVD-338 DVD Spray Cleaner
- Apple Final Cut Studio 2 - Old Version
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Remanufactured Hitachi DZMV550A DVD Camcorder w/18x Optical Zoom
Customer Review: A great camcorder, but.....
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this on a lark at a Circuit City store that was closing, so I only paid $450 and could return it with no restocking fee (because it was "open box"). For taking movies I really loved it. The image quality was very nice, the controls were fairly logical and easy to figure out, and the image stabilizer worked very nicely. On a cold Chicago day (20 deg F) I brought it into a butterfly garden (78 deg F and VERY humid) and the lens defogged faster than any other I've owned and the recorder was unaffected. The only problem was what to do AFTER shooting the video.
If you use the DVD-R discs (about $2 each at Sam's Club), you need to "finalize" the disc before it can be played in a regular DVD player. This takes 23 minutes and requires using the AC adapter, which is unacceptable. And you get poor DVD menus. Or, you can use the re-usable DVD-RAM discs ($18 each in stores, $6 on the internet) but these discs won't work in most DVD players or computer DVD burners.
So, I took some video with DVD-R discs, and it came out fine, but I didn't like spending $2 apiece for discs that held 30 minutes of video with poor menus.
And I took some video with a DVD-RAM disc. This video came out a little nicer, but was a little more work. First I had to download the video onto my computer (a late 2002 model Celeron). That was easy enough through the USB cable. If I updgraded to USB 2.0, it would be even faster. Then, on the computer, I loaded the video files into the DVD burning program. This was very un-intuitive, but I figured it out. Then the program burned my DVD. It took almost an hour, which is unacceptable, but the result was a beautiful and professional looking DVD disc. A more up-to-date computer, with a Pentium 4 processor and faster hard disk, probably would have done this task in much less time.
So I reluctantly returned the camcorder. I say reluctanly because it fit my hand almost perfectly, and I really enjoyed the quality of video produced by the DVD-RAM disc and software. Really it was much nicer than my Sharp VL-NZ50 camcorder. However, I didn't like time consuming requirements to get a disc that would play in a DVD player. Also, my old camcorder works fine, so it was hard to justify buying another one. I gave it 4 stars because of the price I paid. After I returned it to Circuit City, I looked at the regular price for this model and it was $699. I wouldn't pay $699 for this. In fact at $699 I would only give this 3 stars. For $699 I expect a 5 star++ experience.
My advice - If you want a DVD camcorder, and you have a good computer with a DVD burner on it, and you are computer literate, and have $700 to burn, then you will be able to enjoy using this camcorder. Otherwise you will hate it. I'm going to hold out another year. By then the price of this model will be much lower, and there will be new models much easier to use.
Description of Remanufactured Hitachi DZMV550A DVD Camcorder w/18x Optical Zoom
DVD Camcorder Notice (from the manufacturer):Hitachi Home Electronics America can only verify Maxell brand DVD discs for use with Hitachi DVD Camcorders.
Hitachi has three main reasons for not supporting other manufacturers discs:
- Not all discs have the same standards for actual construction, therefore some may not work. An example of this is a disc that has a very thin writing surface, one so thin that the DVD Camcorder laser cannot properly write information.
- Quality of discs...some discs may be able to be written to, but will also peel and become defective within a short period of time. This can happen within a year or so after writing a disc, which is unacceptable for someone trying to document memories.
- While some DVD-R discs can be written and finalized from our camcorder, the percentage of DVD players that can playback that disc is greatly reduced due to different writing surface depths.
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