AVCHD - format for consumer HD camcorder

As all we know, Sony & Panasonic have jointly developed and announced AVCHD for future consumer HD camcorders last month.

HD vdo : 1080i , 720p
VDO Codec : MPEG4 AVC/H.264
Audio Codec : Dolby Digital (AC3) or Linear PCM
Maximum system bit rate : 18 Mbps (or about 2.25 MB/s)
Media : 8-cm DVD (Panasonic has decided to put this format on SD card also)

Source
panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en060511-5 (http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en060511-5/en060511-5.html)
panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en060511-6 (http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en060511-6/en060511-6.html)
camcorderinfo.com/Sony-and-Panasonic-Announce-High-Definition-Camcorder-Format (http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-and-Panasonic-Announce-Blu-Ray-High-Definition-Camcorder-Format.htm)

IMO, AVCHD on 8-cm DVD disc might not be practical due to the limited disc capacity but AVCHD on SD is much more interesting. SD card can support up to 32 GB (currently 4GB card is on the market meanwhile 8GB is on the way). Moreover, SDHC can guarantee minimum transfer rate as 3 classes -- 2 MB/s (16 Mbps) , 4 MB/s (32 Mbps) and 6 MB/s (48 Mbps) on which is perfect for video recording. (also very high shock resistance of the flash card compared with harddrive, DVD or even tape)

Btw, what I'm not quite clear is I've heard from some sites that there won't be any player that support AVCHD. Does that mean AVCHD file format will not be compatible with Blu-ray / HD-DVD player in the future ? ... I understand that Blu-ray and HD-DVD standard include MPEG4 AVC/H.264 in their standard codecs. (I mean in case we put AVCHD file from SD card and author & burn onto the Blu-ray / HD-DVD disc properly.) If the AVCHD format is compatible with Blu-ray and HD-DVD standard, it should be popular in the consumer market since no re-encoding required.

For existing DVD players, AVCHD software needed to be installed in order to playback the disc. (some sites state that the maximum res is 480p)

www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,125680,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00 (http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,125680,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp)

Blu-ray player should be able to play the AVCHD file. So consumers can play AVCHD on DVD disc with Blu-ray player in case the Blu-ray player is backward compatible with current DVD disc. I think this's the temporary solution before manufacturers will be ready to squeeze Blu-ray drive into camcorders. Then camcorders should be able to record AVCHD onto Blu-ray disc instead of DVD.

Good news ! AVCHD format version 1.0 has been released
www.avchd-info.org/press/20060713.html (http://www.avchd-info.org/press/20060713.html)

Some changes from the first outlines of AVCHD format (http://www.avchd-info.org/press/20060511.html)

Recordable media : 8cm DVD media/SD Memory Card/“Memory Stick”/Hard Disk Drive
System bit rate : up to 24 Mbps = 3 MB/s (changed from 18 Mbps)

I think AVCHD could be better than the HDV format (MPEG2 / 25Mbps vdo bit rate) with significant margin. For "MemoryStick", I can guess next year we would see the flash card camcorder from Sony. With 3 MB/s data rate, SDHC only class 4 and 6 can handle.

Check out these AVCHD samples from Sony HDR-UX1
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.watch.impress.co.jp%2Fav%2Fdocs%2F20060809%2Fzooma268.htm