Overall, the DZ-GX20A is rather button-free and is not intimidating.
Introduction
On one level, you gotta love Hitachi. When not building nuclear power plants or locomotives, its engineers crank out televisions and DVD camcorders. In other words, Hitachi has engineering muscle; they're a bit challenged in the marketing arena, though, since they barely spend a dime letting consumers know what they have. Even though Sony is the dominant player in DVD camcorders, Hitachi actually made the first one in 2000 and supplied Panasonic for years. So much for being the first to market!
The company has four DVD-based camcorders in 2005, with the DZ-GX20A the proverbial top-of-the-line; it features 2.12 megapixel still capability as well as rewritable DVD-RAM and write-once DVD-R video recording. Competing Sony DVD camcorders do not use RAM media, as they've opted for -/+ (dash and plus) RW. Even though it has a 10x optical zoom, true 16:9 recording, a built-in flash, electronic image stabilization and a number of manual options, this is not the best camcorder available. It certainly doesn't have the fireworks associated with the new high-definition Sony HDR-HC1, nor the low price of its MiniDV competitors. But worst of all, it simply doesn't take outstanding videos.
by Lee Johnso on November 8, 2009:
“As with any new medium, the dvd-cam format takes time to learn about and understand. The recorded picture quality while maybe not brodcast quality was crisp and undistorted. while the color reproduction was not precise, it was acceptable to everyone who...” More...