Blu-ray isn’t dead yet. Sales of Blu-ray players in Japan topped sales of regular DVD players for the first time last month, an indication that consumers are finally warming up to the high-def format. Spun a different way, sales of Blu-ray alone in April were three times the amount of both Blu-ray and HD DVD combined in January.

Reasons for the sudden uptick in sales include people finally coming to terms with the end of the high-def format war to HDTVs no longer being seen as a luxury, but merely the type of TV that one buys now.

Sales are expected to rise even further as manufacturers slash prices in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

I’ll get by with rips, thanks.

DemystifyingDigital is a feature written by Dan Havlik, editor of DemystifyingDigital.com

There’s no doubt about it, HD and DVD camcorders are the bomb but unless you know which ones are a breeze to use, you could be stuck with an expensive paper weight. (The last time our dad pulled his camcorder out of the closet was during the “exciting” analog days of Hi8.) We took a look at some of the latest high-definition and DVD camcorders and picked out our top three in terms of quality and ease of use. What’s the use of a great bell or whistle if you have no idea how to play it?

Sanyo Xacti HD1000
The Sanyo Xacti HD1000 is a fabulous little camcorder that lets you shoot in High Definition while recording to easy-to-find SD flash memory cards. The biggest upgrade about this new version is that it gives you full 1080i HD capability (as opposed to the lower-res 720p of the Sanyo VPC-HD2), which is kind of unbelievable for a camcorder that fits in your pocket and weighs less than 10 ounces. Thanks to a compressed HD format, you can squeeze up to an hour and 25 minutes of full 1080i HD onto an 8 GB SDHC card. An HDMI port on the HD1000 lets you connect the camcorder directly to a high-def television for immediate playback.
$799
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