Panasonic's HDC-SD1 and HDC-DX1 AVCHD 1080i camcorders loosed

Say good morning to the first production run of Panasonic's AVCHD 1080i 3CCD camcorders. That's right, Panny took the drab yet so, so sexy CEATEC prototype and turned her out with some shiny new paint as the HDC-SD1. Fortunately, it's still packing that 12x optical zoom Leica DICOMAR lens in addition to a 3-inch LCD, 1.5-hour battery, and HDMI (1.2a) for output and control with Panasonic's VIERA Link universal remote. The camera utilizes those three 1/4-inch CCDs to record video to SD/SDHC cards for up to 90/60/40-minutes with 13/9/6-Mbps compression, respectively, when toting the bundled 4GB SDHC card. It'll even grab a 1.5 megapixel snap while simultaneously recording if you have the urge. On sale in Japan for ¥180,000 or about $1,531 starting December 1st. Oh, and Panny also announced their HDC-DX1 model which shares the same specs but records to 8-cm DVDs instead for ¥160,000 (about $1,361) starting December 15th. More pics of both 3CCD cams after the break.

[Via Impress]