Panasonic knows people love high def (especially when viewed on its own HDTVs), so it’s upgraded the old HDC-SD1 and DX1 video cameras to the high def resolution of 1920 x 1080. Reborn as the HDC-SD3 and the HDC-DX3, these video cameras record onto SD cards and DVDs (ugh, I thought discs were dying) rather than a hard drive. The DX3, the fancier of the two, can fit 90 minutes of high def video onto a 4GB SD card, which isn’t bad at all.
Because it’s based in Japan, Panasonic will release the upgraded video cameras there first later this month. You might as well take a wild guess as to when (or if) they’ll come out here.
Press Release [Panasonic via infoSync World]
90 minutes high def on a 4 GB SD card? Explain to me exactly what the expression high def in that sentence means, because from the compression and low bitrate that must be applied to get that much time out of 4 GB there can’t be much high def left, it’s certainly not 1080i (or p) anymore. Ha, and people were complaining that they could fit only 13 minutes of 720p on a 4GB SD card with the Canon TX-1 hybrid camcorder. :-)
I can’t be the only one who still beleives that the Mini DV tapes are still the best. I hate the idea of having to upload all the information to a computer before i can continue on with recording. I suppose you could always just invest in more SD/CF cards, but with the hard drive camcorders you’re kinda screwed, no?
PS – Camcorders are not my speciality, so I may be missing something obvious here.