By Matthew Henry

SYDNEY: JVC today released a standalone DVD burner for its latest Everio hard disk drive (HDD) camcorders which allows users to burn full-size DVDs directly from the camcorder, without the need of a PC.

The Everio Share Station (RRP $329) is designed for users who simply want to transfer raw footage from an Everio camcorder’s internal hard drive to a normal DVD disk for playback on a TV, without editing the footage on a PC.

“In three simple steps you can burn a full-sized DVD, and they are full-length disks too, not 8cm disks which have a smaller capacity,” said JVC promotions manager, Susan Rogic.

The Share Station connects to an Everio camcorder via USB cable, and takes about 45 minutes to burn one hour of footage in Ultra Fine-mode (about 4GB of data) to a DVD-R/-RW disk.

JVC has also launched three new Everio G-series camcorder models, the 20GB GZ-MG26 (RRP $1,099), and two 30GB models with the ability to operate the Share Station – the  GZ-MG37 (RRP $$1,299) and GZ-MG77 (RRP $1,499).

The Share Station is not backwards compatible with older Everio camcorders, and will currently only work with the two new 30GB G-series models, although JVC will ensure compatibility in future Everio releases.

In recent months DVD camcorders have stolen market share from MiniDV tape camcorders due to their ease of use and simple playback via any DVD player. The Share Station gives JVC’s Everio products a similar advantage by taking the PC out of the equation.

The HDD camcorder segment is also growing rapidly, and JVC will continue to promote Everio as the eventual successor to tape and disk-based camcorders.

“It’s exactly like with the audio market, we’ve seen everyone move from tapes and CD media to hard disk mp3 players, and the video reording market is heading in exactly the same direction. You might as well move straight to hard disk and do more,” said Rogic.