For less than $1,500, crystal-clear high-def video is yours for the
making! We test and compare five new HD camcorders—learn
which one’s right for you
W
hen you brought home that shiny, new
HDTV, your jaw promptly dropped at
the first sight of its wondrous, super-
sharp video. Wouldn’t it be great to
shoot a boatload of that footage yourself? Well,
what’s stopping you?
In just the past few months, the high-definition
camcorder world has changed. HD camcord-
ers are actually priced within reason, making the
prospect of owning one mighty tempting. Sure,
prices have plummeted, but is it a good time to
buy? Yes. Especially, if you like the idea of watch-
ing your footage by plugging that camcorder into
your HDTV’s HDMI port and then controlling the
playback with a bundled mini-remote—a staple
accoutrement. You can even do some rudimentary
editing within disk-based camcorders, making
playlists and arranging your footage nonsequen-
tially and then feeding your work directly into that
HDTV. Neat.
If you want to transfer the camera’s footage
to your PC, edit it, add effects, and then turn out
your own masterpiece, that’s getting to be an
easier experience, too. But it takes some major
multicore processing—even our quad-core test
machine strained under all the data-crunching
these highly compressed files require. That’s
because the majority of HDTV camcorder purvey-
ors have embraced a new compression format
By charlie white
HD CAMCOR DERS
FINALLY ARRIVE
58 MAXIMUMPC HOLIDAY 2007
PANASONIC HDC-SX5