Sony Adds Svelte HD Camcorder

By Greg Scoblete -- TWICE, 4/3/2008

San Diego, Calif. – Sony will ship a new high definition camcorder to dealers in May.

The HDR-TG1 weighs in at 10 ounces and records 1920 by 1080i video to Memory Stick PRO Duo and PRO Duo Mark2 cards. A 4GB Mark2 card will be bundled with the unit.

It can also snap 4-megapixel still images.

The camcorder is clad in titanium, like Sony’s Cyber-shot W300 still camera, announced in February.

The TG1 features a 10x optical zoom Carl Zeiss lens with SteadyShot stabilizaton, Dolby Digital 5.1-channel recording with a built-in zoom microphone, a 2.7-inch touch screen LCD, and face detection when shooting stills and recording video. It is capable of spotting up to eight faces in a frame and devotes more encoding bits to faces during the encoding process for improved quality, Sony said.

It uses a 2-megapixel ClearVid CMOS sensor and Sony’s Bionz processing engine.

The TG1 will retail for $900. Sony will also sell a travel kit for $100 that offers a battery, travel charge and pouch. A custom case for the unit will retail for $50.