The Hitachi DZ-HS300A ($599 MSRP) is an interesting camcorder, even in a year marked by a veritable flowering of diversity. There are standard definition cams that record to DVD, flash, HDD, and tape in DV and numerous flavors of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 compression, not to mention a wide range of HD cams that record to as many media types. The Hitachi DZ-HS300A marks another emerging trend: dual media video recording, to both DVDs or to an onboard 8GB HDD. If you’ve ever spent a day recording a family reunion with a DVD camcorder, and filled up a fistful of DVDs before lunch, you already may have fantasized about this unit...

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