Last year it was camcorders with internal hard disks, but this year the latest trend is flash memory.

Flash memory has many advantages over conventional hard disk technology, the greatest of which is that it requires no moving parts. It has been, until recently, small in capacity and large in price, but that is now beginning to reverse. We are seeing flash memory capacities creep up – expect to see laptops using solid state memory for all the advantages that it gives this new generation of camcorders.

The sort of capacities required for laptops is still prohibitively expensive, but drop to the 8GB used by camcorders and it is no longer a costly technology. The other benefits to flash memory are that products using it will be lighter, that unlike hard disks it doesn’t require cooling and with no moving parts, it’s less of a drain on battery life.

Camcorders using flash memory will also be ready for use faster from switch on, so there’s less chance of missing that golden moment. Obviously, if you like to film hours upon hours of footage, a hard disk camcorder may suit better because of its greater capacity.

Expect to see various new flash memory camcorders on the market this coming October. Among those on show at Gitex were Samsung’s latest high definition range. It is actively focusing on flash memory for its camcorders now, and the VP-HMX10C shown here will cost around Dhs3,000. The company said 8GB can hold two hours of 720p HD footage, and the unit (including battery) weighs only about 80g. It also has models with DVDs as well, although they don’t record to the DVD, rather to the flash memory, and footage can then be transferred to DVD in-camera.

Panasonic’s models are a little more expensive, costing in the region of Dhs5,000 once out in October. The HDC-SD5 is flash memory only, while the HDC-SX5 can also record to DVD. They can be plugged straight into HDTVs via an HDMI slot and take 3.1MP stills photos.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Gitex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.