Panasonic camcorders go HD

In an attempt at stealing some of the HD market (and I guess at producing crappy movies?), Panasonic has joined the HD club by announcing their two new HD camcorders. For those who love the Panasonic brand of personals camcorders, but also have always wished to analyze the pores in their children’s faces, can now have the brand recognition they’ve always wanted. The HDC-SD1 ($1499) records onto SD cards, providing you with up to an hour of High Def recordings on a 4GB card. The HDC-DX1 ($1399) records straight to DVD, with a maximum recording time of 40 minutes. both record onto SD cards, providing you with up to an hour of High Def recording on a 4GB card. How many more indie movie directors will pop out from this one? And really, how many crappy film directors do we need?

The HDC-SD1 comes equipped with a SD card intact, which helps make up for the steep price. We don’t really find owning a HD camera being of much use now, since prices are sure to drop with the added competition of the Panasonic HD’s now announced and because we really don’t have anything worth recording in HD. You can also expect other emerging technologies to make HD a defunked technology. Though until then, indie film directors will rejoice, and we will have to pretend to like their crap movies. — Andrew Dobrow

Press statement [Panasonic]