casio ex-v7 h264/avc
 

the casio looks to be one of the first to offer at least a higher bit rate sd widescreen mpeg4 format;

http://www.exilim.de/euro/exilimhizo...pecifications/

The 7x zoom and stereo offer a good feature set for a small, pocketable cam. Some of the footage is surprisingly good and it encodes in the 264 widescreen format at 7.2megabit/sec.

Maybe a hd option will be on future models, but at least casio are offering reasonable compression rates. This is a lot better than the equivalent sanyo offering in many ways. As a hybrid, the stills are some of the best I've seen from a compact p&s, so Sanyo may have their legs chopped from under them with this one.

Sanyo announce they're the first, I don't think so
 

The giro stability looks interesting, but apart from that( and the promised excellent low-light shooting, we'll be the jdge of that!) the casio seems to offer a whole lot better experience!

http://www.steves-digicams.com/diginews.html#sanyo_cg65