Summary: Not quite what I expected

Comment: I bought this camera to replace a Sony Digital 8 that went bad. I wanted to save the time of putting my tapes on DVD, and figured I'd buy a DVD camera.

I like the compact size of it, and it has a decent optical zoom. You can also film in widescreen mode, which is cool, but you can't switch between 16:9 and 4:3 on the same DVD.

Now for the downsides. The main one is that when I try to play back a DVD on the camera (whether it is finalized or not) sometimes I get severe pixelation - to the point where the camera pauses playback. If I put the finalized DVD in any of my players, it works fine. I don't know if this is expected behavior, but I wouldn't think so. I emailed Hitachi support about it a couple of weeks ago, and I've heard no response.

Another problem is the indoor video. The color and contrast are poor. I even bought this model with the light to try to avoid that, but it doesn't help much. Actually, it is too direct, and not powerful enough. This results in it being very harsh within about 5 feet, and ineffective past about 10 feet. Outdoor shots look pretty good.

One last comment is on the finalizing. The automatic indexing is nice, but you have to have the camera plugged in to finalize the DVD. I guess this makes sense, but it is a little inconvenient.

So, overall this purchase has been a bit of a let down.