Well, I haven't seen anything about these here yet, so I hope this actually qualifies as news.

http://www.jvc.com/press/index.jsp?item=461&pageID=1

I know MPEG2, especially on these SD cams, is probably junk to edit, but I have to admit these are just cool. Until we get larger solid state media to record onto, this seems like a pretty good performance/capacity/price tradeoff.

I'd bet real money that a new JVC HDV cam with hard disk is close behind, but I suppose that would be Area 51 stuff, so I digress.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com

That's not too far fetched about JVC ProHD and harddrives. Firestore is supposed to be working on a model for that camera, and another one for the forthcoming Panny camera. So, even though it might not be a built in feature, it is going to be a high definition type format with a harddrive to record on.

-gb

Just been at the pressmeeting. There will be a HDV-version later in the year or early next year. In the fall there will be an external dual layer DVD-burner, so you can bypass the pc in making your DVD-movies.

The prices:

GZ-MG20 $800 - 20 GB, VGA F1.8
GZ-MG30 $900 - 30 GB, VGA F1.8
GZ-MG40 $900 - 20 GB, 1 Mpix F1.2
GZ-MG50 $1,000 - 30 GB, 1Mpix F1.2

And it is only the start of a series of harddisk-based cameras from JVC

The sales picth is: No more tapes, Easy DVD-burning, erase bad takes, edit in camera.

Picture quality at highest bitrate is near DV-quality and better than any Sony DVD-cam. And you can have 4.5 hour in that quality on the 20 GB version.

Nice build, real 16:9, digital stabilization, cute little videolight.

That was my notes from the meting. BtW the PAL version will be 25 fps.

I just received the above unit for Christmas and have a couple of questions which desperately need to be answered!

1. The box has a sticker on it specifying the unit to be GZ-MG20e. There
is also a PAL designation on the same sticker. At the JVC website
everything I read says the unit is PAL/NTSC compatible. Will I be able
to record video on the unit and then copy it onto a DVD as either PAL
or NTSC compatible?

2. I am living in Norway and will be sending home movies back to Canada
for relatives to view on NTSC DVD players. Should I just take the
unit back to the store and order a Noth American model which is
definitely PAL/NTSC compatible?

Any information that can be provided would be greatly appreciated as the JVC technical support line could not help me nor could the salesman at the
store. Thanks.