Canon just announced the HV20, a 1080i HD camera with building in hard drive. The camera uses Canon’s 1920 x 1080 CMOS and can take 24p cinema style video along with 3.1-megapixel stills.

It includes a hot shoe for external light sources and microphones. 10x zoom and mini HDMI — wow! — round out the package. Strangely enough there is no mention of hard drive size but it does have a miniSD slot. By the name, we can expect it to have something around 20GB, but I just sent the folks an email to confirm. Sorry. This is MiniDV. Not sure why I thought it was HDD.

Available in April, the HV20 for about $1099, this thing is a worthy adversary to Sony and JVCs HD lines, especially considering the price.