Panasonic HDC-HS350 allows you to record over 30 hours of HD

If you liked the HDC-TM350, then we can pretty much guarantee you'll be a fan of the HS350, unveiled by Panasonic today. Essentially identical to its elder brother -- but for the hard disk bump on its right side -- the new AVCHD camcorder ups internal storage from 64GB to 240GB and retains all other salient features: 10.6 megapixel 3MOS sensor, 12x optical zoom and SDHC expansion up to 32GB per card. The increase in storage allows for over 30 hours of continuous full HD recording, meaning that your battery will give out long before you need to fiddle with your storage options. No word on the when, where and how much questions, but if we had to guess we'd say soon, everywhere and plenty.

[konshuss @ Jul 8th 2009 8:19AM]

if i could post photos in comments, it would be of homer simpson drooling.

[wrs589 @ Jul 8th 2009 8:34AM]

Is that Xenon flash?
Looks silly

[bublik @ Jul 8th 2009 8:47AM]

nice

[ms1621 @ Jul 8th 2009 9:02AM]

It's silly to record 30hours when the battery dies in 1.5 hours.

[Ebzy @ Jul 8th 2009 9:11AM]

Multiple batteries or record while plugged in are also optional

[Khanh @ Jul 8th 2009 9:17AM]

It's also more convenient, for me anyway, to swap batteries than to swap media (not having to worry about writing over something)

[Le Big Mac @ Jul 8th 2009 9:38AM]

If I'm on vacation, it's generally easier to find an electrical outlet than a hard drive to download to.

[kal326 @ Jul 8th 2009 10:48AM]

That is also on the standard, included battery. Most camcorders have several different capacities of batteries available for added coin. I think my JVC has 3 or 4 different capacities available with the largest of them roughly adding 3x the battery life. Plus there is always the option of multiple batteries as somebody has already mentioned.

[gunner @ Jul 8th 2009 11:07AM]

@ Le Big Mac,

Exactly!! That harddrive sucks a lot of juice, they should have just released a version with SSD (yes I know still expensive, but nevertheless....) or let the user decide on what size and how many flash cards to buy.

[xValentine @ Jul 8th 2009 9:02AM]

30 Hours of HD Sex Scandal.

omg

[Hackettman @ Jul 8th 2009 10:22AM]

3MOS...... 3 CMOS....... Sounds like a pile of crap.... But it looks like they mightve put a viewfinder on this one which the others are missing...... Because sometimes I dont want anyone to see that its not the hot girl Im zooming in on but the cute nerdy one whose working the gamestop counter......

[jambino @ Jul 9th 2009 10:54AM]

How is a 3 CMOS setup a pile of crap? Wouldn't it essentially work
like a Foveon setup, but without the need to upadvertize it's
viewable resolution?
On another note.... That's a manual focus ring and a Leica lens. If
the price is right this looks like it might be a nice little step
between a sony MiniDV handycam and a GL-2

My Country-Music-Zombie-Romance-Comedy-Epic may happen yet!

[dan2600 @ Jul 8th 2009 11:04AM]

Is it still using that utter crap lossy proprietary Panasonic compression format? When can we just get consumer cameras that output a nice HDV stream to an external HDD via firewire or eSATA like the pro cameras do.

[DC @ Jul 8th 2009 11:13AM]

You think HDV isn't a utter crap lossy compression format?

[dan2600 @ Jul 8th 2009 11:15AM]

AGGGG sorry, your absolutely right, i forgot not to talk about formats before 12pm.

ok 10-bit uncompressed with 24-bit PCM audio :)

[manis @ Jul 8th 2009 11:26AM]

i like that manual focus thing near the lens...

[Nutsy @ Jul 8th 2009 11:34AM]

AVCHD is better than HDV but DVCHDpro is much better than AVCHD and theres many other codecs they could of used...

Ill love to have this camera... but still would prefer a better codec.

[Fanfoot @ Jul 8th 2009 11:55AM]

Cool. I guess that 240GB 1.8" PATA hard drive that could go in the iPod classic is now shipping...

[lakersin2025 @ Jul 8th 2009 12:05PM]

I'm assuming it's only 30fps at 1080p?

[bandigolo @ Jul 8th 2009 12:17PM]

Are we ever going to get a hands-on review of the new Pannys vs. the new Canons?

[Christian @ Jul 8th 2009 2:37PM]

Dont forget to buy a pillow also to sleep while the video downloads to your computer!

[Michael Scrip @ Jul 8th 2009 4:35PM]

Great. This camera will hold 240GB of video. That will be its big selling point for consumers.

But the problem is... consumers won't know how to move 240GB of data to their computers... or how to properly back it up.

The nice thing about this camcorder is... dads will be able to store Timmy's entire soccer season on the camcorder! Instead of a shelf full of videotapes in the old days... you just put this camcorder on the shelf for storage!

I know people that still have pictures from last summer on their digital cameras... because they don't know how to manage photos on their computers. They are using the camera itself for long term storage.

* I know I'm being cynical... but the truth is... technology is rapidly outpacing people's knowledge of what to do with that technology. EVERYBODY has a digital camera... but NO ONE knows what to do with their photos. I once talked to a family that shot digital pictures... printed each one... then deleted their card. No computer storage at all. Wow.