
This morning Canon USA and Canon Inc. announced the release of two prosumer HDV camcorders, the XH G1 ($7000) and XH A1 ($4000). Both sports the identical imaging system as Canon’s XL H1, including three 1/3-inch 16:9 CCDs and the ability to record 1080i HDTV recording in both 60 interlaced and 24 frame rate modes. Other features include an image-stabilized 20x optical zoom lens that isn’t interchangeable and a 2.8-inch LCD view screen. These two new HDV camcorders are a welcome update to the 4-year old GL2, which remained unchanged during that time.
Earlier, I’d mentioned the XH G1 and HX A1 are identical, so why the $3,000 difference? The XH G1 is professionally equipped with “jack pack” of input and output ports like HD/SD-SDI, Genlock and TC in/out. This allows streaming uncompressed HD footage for recording to another format with less compression than the consumer HDV taps.
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