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Panasonic Offers Two New Standard Def HDD Camcorders for 2008 by Michael Perlman Published on Jan 6, 2008 1:00 PM

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Panasonic SDR-H60

January 6, 2008 - Today at CES in Las Vegas, Panasonic announced two new standard definition hard disk drive (HDD) camcorders. The SDR-H40 (Specs, ) ($449.95 MSRP) and SDR-H60 ($549.95 MSRP) will be replacing last year’s SDR-H18 and SDR-H20, respectively. The surge in the popularity of the HDD medium is still flowing, though Sony and JVC continue to offer many more models in this category than Panasonic. Both new models are equipped with Advanced OIS – optical image stabilization – which is a reported 8x increase in the correction rate over their previous OIS.

The SDR-H40 (full specs) features a 42x optical zoom while the SDR-H60 (full specs) is gifted with an uncanny 50x optical zoom—the most powerful zoom range in recent memory. Both camcorders have an Easy Archive function that allows a direct burn to DVD. The SDR-H40 and SDR-H60 feature 2.7-inch wide LCD screens with Power LCD Plus, which simply adjusts the brightness of the LCD screen.

Both the SDR-H40 and SDR-H60 are equipped with a single 1/6-inch CCD with a gross pixel count of 800,000, slightly upgraded from the 680,000-pixel chips in other Panasonic camcorders. The effective pixel count in 4:3 is 290,000, and in 16:9 the effective pixel count is 380,000. Still resolution is limited to 640 x 480, and the camcorders cannot capture stills and video simultaneously.

Panasonic SDR-H40

The SDR-H40 will be available in January for $449.95 while the SDR-H60 will be available in May for $549.95.