Digital Trends

As DT readers know, I’m a huge fan of high-def camcorders. Video quality is so much better than standard-def, it’s a joke. What’s not funny is the fact HD camcorders are expensive compared to their SD brethren. About the most affordable one is the Canon HV10 for around $800 USD. Fortunately, the introduction of new models is pushing overall prices down a bit. Still, standard definition camcorders are much, much cheaper. Enter the Sanyo VPC-HD2 Xacti HD camcorder for $699 USD list (around $600 USD in stores). This Secure Digital card based camcorder records 720p video versus 1080i for all the other HD competitors. Still it is officially high-def and uses MPEG-4 compression. Not only does it record high-def video it takes 7.1-megapixel stills, the best of any camcorder on the market. In theory, the Xacti should be the ultimate two-in-one device at a great price. That’s the theory, folks. Now it’s time to put the theory to the test…