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Next Generation Camcorders on the Horizon

Techstination feature for Wednesday, May 28, 2003

The next generation of camcorders is on the horizon. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Prices have been falling fast for digital camcorders... that's good news for families looking to capture graduations and summer vacations. Digital camcorders can be connected to home computers... so video can be easily edited and burned onto CDs or DVDs. Sharp Electronics has created a new compact digital camcorder in the VL-Z7U. It also includes a 1.3 mega pixel still digital camera with a built in flash. Senior product marketing manager Robert Pleyer says it is the first that includes an LCD screen with continuous grain silicon technology...

"Basically that has double the resolution and it has half the power consumption. But its really, really high point for a consumer is that it operates in direct bright sunlight."

It is priced higher than many low end digital camcorders. But if you're looking at the high end, Pleyer says some big changes are on the way...

"High def camcorders are definitely on the horizon and also the viability of non-tape recording process. In other words a hard drive or a non-volatile memory card, like we use today for still cameras, that will eventually evolve into full motion video."

That will allow camcorders to not only capture video at much higher resolutions, the cameras will be even smaller. Pleyer says consumer models should begin to arrive in about two years. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.