Hitachi America announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which ends Tuesday, that it will have a DVD-RAM camcorder on retail shelves by the end of January. According to Hitachi, the DZ-MV100A will be the first camcorder on the market that records images onto a digital versatile disc. But first won't necessarily spell success. Dataquest analyst Mary Craig said she believes consumer demand will lag until the price of the camcorder and DVD-RAM discs comes down. The camcorder will sell for nearly $2,000, which Craig called "too expensive" for consumers. Each 2.8GB disc will run $20 to $30 and hold about two hours of images. In addition, the 8cm DVD-RAM discs, which are physically smaller than the conventional DVDs used for studio films, can't be played on most DVD players. However, Hitachi expects that a DVD player that can read DVD-RAM will eventually hit the market, said Greg Belloni, a Hitachi spokesman. At CES, Panasonic also announced that this spring it will begin selling the VDR-M10, a DVD-RAM camcorder with similar features to Hitachi's model. DVD-RAM is one of three DVD-recordable formats that will be vying for consumer attention. The others are DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+RW, which hasn't yet hit the market. Belloni said Hitachi chose DVD-RAM for good reasons: It can record at twice the speed of DVD-R/DVD-RW. And DVD-RAM discs can be rewritten 100,000 times, while a DVD-R/DVD-RW disc can be rewritten 1,000 times. DVD-RAM can be used for both data storage and video editing. It makes the latter function easier because a person can readily jump back and forth from one scene to another during editing. Because of the scarcity of DVD-RAM players on the market, Craig said the current format is better for storage than for moviemaking. The camcorder can also take 1.9-megapixel digital still shots. Have your say instantly, and see what others have said. Click on the TalkBack button and go to the ZDNet News forum. Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom. And read what others have said.