We already told you about pricing on the Lumix GH1 yesterday thanks to J&R, but it’s never official until the manufacturer says it is. Panasonic announced this morning that the GH1 will be available in the US for a “suggested retail price of $1499.95” and only in black. That is all.

Without having held and shot with the GH1 myself it’s hard to say if Panasonic’s latest Micro Four Thirds Lumix is worth a hoot. Sure, it shoots HD video, which is fine and dandy, but these are cameras and not camcorders. If you fail to produce high quality still images then who gives a damn if it shoots HD video or bakes you a cake. Anyway, Eric over at PB got a little face time with a pre-production model and posted a clip of the encoded AVCHD video to MPEG-4. It’s not terribly exciting, but some of you have probably been wondering about it.

Now we’re talking, folks. Panasonic just announced an updated version of their Micro Four Thirds camera, the G1, that records HD video. Videos are recorded using the AVCHD codec and 1080p video is shot at 24fps while 720p is shot at 60fps. There’s a dedicated video record button on the back of the GH1.