SDR-S150 Announced by Panasonic for US, No Date Set by David Kender Published on Jun 9, 2006 6:00 AM

June 9, 2006  - Late yesterday, Panasonic announced the upcoming release of the SDR-S150 (Review, Specs, $699.95), an SD card-based camcorder following-up on the 2005 SDR-S100. This announcement came hours after Panasonic of Japan released information on a similar camcorder, the SDR-S200. The company stated that the limited information on the S150 was part of a worldwide announcement, and that a formal, more detailed announcement is upcoming. Pricing, a product release date, and photos are not currently available.

The press release indicates that the two camcorders are identical. Even some of the phrasing indicates that the press release was merely translated from the Japanese. Panasonic's US division has confirmed that the July 8th release date for the SDR-S200 does not necessarily apply to the SDR-S150.

It is certain that the SDR-S150 will feature a Leica Dicomar lens, three 1/6-inch CCDs (800K gross pixels), optical image stabilization, and 10x optical zoom. The video will be captured to a 2GB SD card (included) in MPEG2, and the camcorder will also be compatible with the new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity, or SD 2.0) card format. Complete specs are available in the official press release.