We've already
seen plenty of these little guys, but
Panasonic has finally busted out its first
AVCHD cameras in Japan, and announced launch dates and pricepoints for a US release. Just in case you need a little refresher, AVCHD is that fancy new HD format joint-developed by Sony and Panasonic that allows for recording to solid-state storage and DVD discs. Panasonic's release covers both of those abilities, with the HDC-SD1 featuring an SDHC slot for recording of around 1 hour of 1080i on a 4GB card, while the HDC-DX1 does mini-DVDs, at about 40 minutes a pop. Both cameras feature 3CCDs and 5.1 surround sound recording via 5 built-in mics. We should be seeing these things stateside in March, with the HDC-SD1 going for $1,500 and the HDC-DX1 for $1,400.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted Dec 7th 2006 12:46PM
hot hot hot... i cant wait to pick up an SD1 :D
any specs on whether or not it'll support their 24p cinefx ability in the dvx line?
That's better than the 15-20 minutes or something I was hearing on the Sony. Will these play in the PS3? The only bad thing with the AVCHD is you need to buy the $1000+ camera, $xxx burner and then $xxxx player. Even then, only you can watch the movie because all your friends and family don't. Nice tech, I just look forward to more products, cheaper prices, players and burners made easy. Can the video be edited on a mac and down rez-ed for SD DVD?
That's better than the 15-20 minutes or something I was hearing on the Sony. Will these play in the PS3? The only bad thing with the AVCHD is you need to buy the $1000+ camera, $xxx burner and then $xxxx player. Even then, only you can watch the movie because all your friends and family don't. Nice tech, I just look forward to more products, cheaper prices, players and burners made easy. Can the video be edited on a mac and down rez-ed for SD DVD?
Sony has a HDD version that records about 2.5 hours at the highest quality, and about 8 hours on standard quality HD. The Sony version has no editor or player for the Mac, but the Windows version has a utility to transcode the video to MPEG-2.
You don't have burn everything to disk. Just play it back on your PC (hooked up to your HD TV). That way you avoid the cost of buying a HD burner, HD media, HD editing software, etc.
opps, sorry for the DP
Of course you could downscale the video to a lower resolution, I'm pretty sure any video editing software will do that. I think the appeal comes for filmmakers who want high def (on a big screen the lack of quality really shows) but don't have the cash for one of the hd cameras on the market today (I believe panasonics cheapest one currently is around $4000). Or people who are HD fiends and want to capture precious memories in a higher resolution than should ever be necessary.
Will someone please enlighten me as to why neither sony nor panasonic have not come out with a 3ccd imager like this with BOTH an sdhc slot AND a 80+ gig hard drive? I mean, sony's new SR1 is cool and all, but 30 gig?! common...wheres that 120gig extra small drive you showed us this week? Why not at least use that one?
3 CCDs = increased cost, increased size, shorter battery life. Bigger HDD = increased cost. When they released a product to "compete" with the current miniDV camcorders, they probably wanted to keep the cost lower for the consumers. For most of us, 1 CCD is "good enough", and the image quality is still so much better than the SD-miniDV videos.
Just a little info..you don't need an hd burner to burn hdv for playback on an hd player. It's been revealed on a couple of hd forums that some editing software w/ hd support will burn your hidef video intact onto a regular dvd disc and it will actually play in a hddvd or bluray player. The caveat is that the limited space on a blank dvd disc will allow roughly only about 20 mins of hd video.
Camcorders are time machines. The higher the definition the better the time travel. I would like a stereoscopic camcorder that captures smell, touch and taste as well. Weeeeee! You could edit a scene to make an apple taste like a banana and have your girlfriend feel like an aligator. What larks!