Hitachi DZGX3300A - Review

By Terry Sullivan
Several camcorder manufacturers, especially Sony, are hell-bent on changing the consumer camcorder market by introducing camcorders that store video to new media formats and produce HD content. This means it's a bad time for any manufacturer to produce a camcorder that doesn't do anything more than last year's model and offers so-so video quality to boot. Unfortunately, that's what I found with the Hitachi DZGX3300A miniDVD camcorder ($799.95 list).

The DZGX3300A, which weighs 1 pound 2 ounces and measures 3.3 by 2 by 4.8 inches (HWD), isn't a terrible camcorder, but with so much happening in the marketplace, it's a lackluster one. The 10X optical zoom is pretty standard. The 2.7-inch articulating LCD was clear and didn't solarize too quickly when viewed at an angle. The viewfinder extends out but doesn't tilt at all. I did like that it features a number of ports, including a USB port and an external mic port.

I also like that there are a variety of manual controls on the camera, but I'm not crazy about the multiselector button on the side, which you need to use to navigate through the menus. The menus are functional but uninspiring, with no special navigation or education features. Camcorder manufacturers should really overhaul the menu structures and be more creative in how they present this information. At present, most menus on camcorders are just mediocre.

* Digital Camcorder Guide
* Buying Guide: Camcorders
* Sony DCR-DVD505
* Canon DC40

In my hands-on tests, the DZGX3300A just wasn't as good as other miniDVD camcorders. For starters, it produced video with a slight reddish cast. The autofocus worked fine and the sound was pretty good, but I did notice some shimmering in my talking-head clip. On the EIA Resolution chart, the DZGX3300A scored 400 average lines, which is decent, but not as good as the Sony DCR-DVD505's 425 lines.

The DZGX3300A takes miniDVD-R, miniDVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+RW 8-cm discs. If you use the miniDVD-R, as I did, you'll need to finalize the disc in the camera in order to play it in a DVD player or on your computer. After the disc was finalized, I had no problem importing it into Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0.

Like most camcorders, the DZGX3300A has a few special features. Hitachi, for instance, was quite intent on promoting its Photo Frame Grab technology. Unfortunately, these frame grabs are just VGA-quality; at this resolution, the technology is not very essential. And as with the Canon DC40, I didn't find the DZGX3300A's night-vision mode to be all that good.

The DZGX3300A does give you the ability to shoot 3-megapixel images. In my tests, I found the quality of these images to be mediocre at best. Like the video footage, the stills had a reddish color cast, and they were also rather soft. The camcorder has the ability to take flash shots, but these didn't impress me either. You can store the shots on an SD card, using the SD slot on the bottom of the device.

When measured against the Sony DVD505 or even the Canon DC40, the Hitachi DZGX3300A just comes up a little short, offering none of the DVD505's quality and nothing like the DC40's slim shape and still-picture capabilities. In the end, it's a camcorder behind its time.

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