Hitachi Ltd says it will next month launch a digital video camera capable of producing high-quality video footage for editing and viewing on personal computers. The company claims the camera system, due on February 22 in Japan, will be the first product of its kind to be able to offer such video manipulation by personal computer without the need for expensive additional equipment. The Moving Picture Experts Group camera can compress recorded video data to one-hundredth of the original where conventional digital video cameras compress data to one-fifth. The camera will cost $1,110 and the accessory kit and storage card for recording video will be $134 and $630 respectively. Initial production is set at 10,000 a month, and Hitachi says it plans to start marketing the camera in the US in March, Europe in June.
