Lake Success (NY) – Canon will be offering a new camcorder that records video in 1080i and stores them on a 40 GB hard drive.

The new HG10 will be Canon’s fourth high-definition consumer camcorder and the first that can record video to an integrated hard drive. According to the company, the 40 GB capacity of the drive is good for up to 15 hours of high definition video in MPEG4-AVC/H.264 format in 1080i resolution.

The integrated 2.96 megapixel CMOS imaging sensor captures video at 60 frames per second interlaced and 24 frames per second progressive. Standard features of the HG10 include a 10x optical lens, a 2.7” LCD, image stabilization and “instant autofocus”.

As competing camcorders the device also allows users to take still images, in this case with a resolution of up to 3.1 megapixels, which are stored on a miniSD card. The camera function covers the full range of the optical zoom, translating into a 35 mm equivalent from 43.6 to 436 mm. Additionally users can grab images from HD videos with a resolution of 2.0 megapixels (1920x1080).

The HG10 is scheduled to become available in October for a suggested retail price of $1299.

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