Sony HDR-SR1 HD Camcorder

The Sony HDR-SR1 is the first high definition camcorder to store video on hard disk.

Sony's first consumer high definition camcorders, the HC1E and HC3 stored movies on tape. While this allowed them to be imported to a PC or Mac for editing relatively easily, using an old-fashioned medium like tape, with all its inherent problems, to store the latest, greatest video format always seemed like an anachronism. Tape gets tangled. It breaks. And you need to shuttle back and forth, putting stress on the heads, to find a specific clip. Hard disk does away with all these problems.

The Sony HDR-SR1 and its DVD-based sibling, the HDR-UX1 are the first camcorders to use the new AVCHD format, jointly developed by Sony and Panasonic. The MPEG-4 based format is designed to encode high definition video at compression settings high enough to allow hours of video to be stored on media such as DVD, hard disk, and flash memory, while preserving the quality that is so important to HD.

The Sony HDR-SR1 can store four hours of HD video at the highest quality setting or eleven hours at the the most basic setting. It has a 3.5in LCD for previewing and reviewing footage and a four megapixel CCD which can capture high resolution stills as well as video.

The Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar lens has a 10x optical zoom and 80x digital zoom, and the built-in microphone can record Dolby 5.1 audio. A neat feature called Smooth Slow record allows you to capture video at 240 fields per second, or 120 frames per second for 3 seconds and play it back at normal speed. This creates a smooth slow motion effect.

Digital stills are stored on a Memory Stick Duo card, and its possible to grab a still and save it to the card while your shooting video.

The HDR-SR1 connects to a computer using USB 2, and when connected to a PC can act as an external hard drive. It will ship in October 2006 and cost $1500.