Hitachi DVDCam DZ-GX3300E

The concept behind this camcorder that is most appealing is that you can use DVDs to record your special moments. The benefit to this is that you can review something that you just recorded, stop playback and start recording again – all without having to find the end of what you just recorded. I’m sure you are aware that with a tape, when you rewind to watch what you just recorded, you need to be at the end of that recording in order to start recording again or you will lose part of what you recorded. The drawback with DVDs is that you must finalize the disc in the camcorder before you can play it in a DVD. The DVD drive that you use must have a spindle so that the disc can be read. I had so many problems with DVDs after finalizing that I called Hitachi tech support and they referred me to a program called cdroller. It can be purchased at www.cdroller.com for about $25.00. I was able to recover 48 out of 50 discs, so that’s not bad. I am not associated with this program, but it does work. I ended up selling my Hitachi and buying a Panasonic that uses tapes. They are much bulkier to carry around, but at least I know that I don’t have to worry about the DVD becoming corrupted.