Sanyo joins the HD market with the VPC-HD1

Portable, light weight HD movie camera also records 5MP still images

30 May 2006 10:54 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Sanyo is expanding its Xacti camera range with the VPC-HD1, the company's new High Definition portable movie camera.

Its LCD is an 2.2-inch OLED display, which means the picture on it is clear and sharp to match its HD recording capabilities.

Sanyo says it is the world's first HD solid state camcorder and the smallest and lightest HD camera on the market. The HD1 also captures 5MP still images and has a 10x optical zoom with a maximum aperture of f3.5.

Straight out of the box, it comes equipped with a 2GB SD memory card, which records from 28 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes of footage, depending on the recording quality.

When recording High Definition video, the HD1 can record 1,280x720 pixels at 30 frames per second in the widescreen 16:9 format.

Thanks to Sanyo's image-enhancement technology, clips recorded at 30fps can be converted and played back at 60fps.

To match its high-quality picture recording capability, the HD1 uses 48kHz, 16-bit, two channel sound AAC-LC in MPEG4 audio, features a noise-reduction feature to reduce wind sound, and also sports microphone socket.

Still images recorded at 5MP can be interpolated in-camera to 10MP, while the 10x optical zoom can be combined with a 10x digital zoom to give the camera 100x zoom capability.

Other specifications include a weight of just 210 grams for the main body, and a Li-Ion battery that yields 60 minutes of recording time.

Pocket-lint is awaiting a price for the VPC-HD1.

Full tags

Cameras, Video And Editing, Camcorders, Sanyo, HDTV