Smart camcorder shoppers know the new big thing is HDD camcorders, specifically of the HD variety, that ditch physical media and allow you to record right to a built-in hard drive in the camera. Physical media is dead, dudes. Why fight it?

Well, Hitachi is going to fight it long and hard. They're releasing a couple of Blu-ray based camcorders. To be fair, the higher-end model also has a HDD, allowing you to burn video to 8cm BR discs when the drive is full, but the lower-end model leaves you with only a Blu-ray drive. Call me crazy, but recording video right to Blu-ray seems to add in a lot of hassle and not a lot of convenience to the video recording process, seeing that you'll probably want to edit what you shoot before burning it to any type of physical media. But hey, it's possible, so they're gonna put it into a product. — Adam Frucci