Sanyo Announces $800 First High Definition SD Recording Camcorder

[paulw]

A new toy for the new year

"Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas - Sanyo has just announced an update, adding high definition to their small line of camcorders on the market. The Sanyo VPC-HD1 is the first camcorder in the world to record high definition video to an SD (Secure Digital) flash media card. According to Sanyo, the new camcorder records 720 lines progressive scan video (720p) at 30 frames per second."

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sanyo-Announces-$800-First-High-Definition-SD-Recording-Camcorder.htm

[Dr Mordrid]

Junkware. The bitrate is too low and Sanyo cams have a history of poor image quality.

Dr. Mordrid

[paulw]

Doc.

Don't you ever sleep.?? I got your reply at abot 9.30PM which would have been about 2.30 am your time..:-)

You are most likely correct in what you say

[Dr Mordrid]

I finally went to bed at 4:00 am our time after taking some pain meds then got up at about 11:00 am.

Typical night these days

Dr. Mordrid

[Jerry Jones]

The key question is whether or not this camcorder utilizes the H.264 codec or not.

MPEG-4 can utilize H.264, but not all flavors of MPEG-4 do.

If this camcorder does utilize the H.264 codec, then the bitrate figures bear no relationship to what we've been formerly led to believe.

The H.264 codec is an entirely new animal in the video world.

You can download samples here:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/

APPLE is betting big time that H.264 will be the *perfect* codec for every stage in the production of video media... including capture, editing, high definition broadcasting, and even archiving.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/

APPLE is betting that H.264 will beat Microsoft's WINDOWS MEDIA:

"Windows Media 9 is proprietary, developed by a single company; H.264 has been through intense peer review by worldwide experts from a large number of industry segments and is ratified as a worldwide standard. And while video quality tests are subjective, we believe H.264 delivers superior video quality when compared with Windows Media 9."

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/faq.html

Not all flavors of MPEG-4 are the same.

For example, the H.264 codec is the LATEST, most advanced incarnation:

"The MPEG-4 video in QuickTime 6, referred to as MPEG-4 Part 2, plays an important role in the evolution of standards for the Internet and wireless multimedia industries, where it has been widely adopted."

"H.264, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, is a newer technology than MPEG-4 Part 2, providing up to four times the frame size of video encoded with the MPEG-4 Part 2 video codec at a given data rate."

So if this new Sanyo camcorder utilizes MPEG-4 with H.264 encoding, then it will be worth watching closely - to find out if this codec that APPLE touts so enthusiastically really cuts the mustard.

The SANYO VPC-HD1 specifications don't reveal much relative to h.264:

http://www.sanyodigital.com/HD1/specifications.html

I'd like to know more about this camcorder in that specific regard.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

"Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Ambarella has devised a family of multicore microprocessors that it says can compress and process HD video efficiently and cheaply."

"The company's chips could be incorporated into a video camera selling for around $799 or into digital still cameras, which would become capable of taking high-resolution stills (8 megapixels or so) as well as TV-quality video."

http://news.com.com/Upstart+aims+to+bring+HD+camco%20rders+to+the+masses/2100-1041_3-5989639.html?tag=nefd.top

Could the reference to the $799 camcorder be a reference to the Sanyo HD1?

http://www.sanyodigital.com/HD1/index.html

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net