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March 17, 2005

Internal Microdrives. The end of video tape?

JVC has been showing off the world's smallest 3CCD Camcorder, the GZ-MC500E. Part of the reason the camcorder is so small is because it lacks of an internal video tape mechanism. The camera records MPEG2 video directly onto tiny 4GB Microdrives (For an idea how much video this is, 4GB is roughly the capacity of a DVD-R). These drives can easily be upgraded to larger capacity as they become available.

The advantages of direct-to-hard disk recording are numerous. The cameras themselves become smaller, more reliable, and use less battery power. The video files they generate can easily and quickly be transfered to a computer or burned onto a DVD. And most importantly, no more video cassettes to deal with!

Gizmodo has a nice collection of information about this camera here.
A hands-on review of the camera can be found here (via infosyncworld).

Posted by at March 17, 2005 03:24 PM