Canon's iVIS HV20 HD camcorder

Well howdy HV20, we've been expecting you. Not too much of a surprise to find Canon's high-def iVIS HV20 camcorder loosed after the inadvertent appearance on Circuit City's web site the other day. Instead of an upright form factor like Canon's HV10, they've gone long-and-lean this time which should help bring a bit more stability to your videos. As we hoped, low light shooting has indeed been improved from a 5 to 3 lux sensitivity at 1/30 second shutter speed or from 0.3 to 0.2 lux at 1/2 second shutter speed. Everything else is just like we heard on this HDV 1080i MiniDV recorder: 2.96 megapixel CMOS sensor, 10x optical zoom, 2.7-inch LCD, miniSD slot and new HDMI out, accessory shoe, and jacks for your headphones and mic. The HV20 is expected to hit Japan sometime in March, priced at about ¥140,000 ($1,154) to go head-to-head with Sony's HDR-HC7. No guarantees mind you, but we expect this to come west before summer.

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Panasonic's DMC-FX30 wide-angle 7.2 megapixel shooter

Panasonic is also unveiling their Lumix DMC-FX30 this morning which Panny claims is the "world's slimmest" to pack a 28mm wide-angle lens. Ok, but at 22-mm (0.87-inches) it's a full 0.2-mm thicker than the listed specs for Samsung's new 28mm wide-angle L74 which packs the same 7.2 megapixel CCD and 3.6x zoom but a bigger 3.0-inch touchscreen LCD around back. Thing is, the L74 has an irregular shape so who knows what to believe at this point -- it wouldn't be the first time Samsung fudged its numbers. So... hyperbole aside, the FX30 is thin and features a 3.6x LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT optical zoom lens, 7.2 megapixel CCD, Mega OIS optical image stabilization, Venus Engine III image-processing for shooting at ISO 1250, and a 2.5-inch 207k pixel LCD (the L74 throws down 230k pixels) with "Power LCD" to boost brightness by 40% (at the expense of battery life) when outdoors. It also records 848 x 480 video to SDHC cards at 30fps and shoots with a shutter release time lag of 0.005 seconds and a 2 frames per second burst mode at full resolution for a maximum of just 5 images. Rounding things out are a 280 picture battery and $349 price tag when these ship sometime in February.

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Zune screens cracking from battery pressure!

Interesting news on the Zune front: a friendly tipster's buddy works at a Microsoft call center and handles Zune-related issues. Apparently they've received numerous reports of the Zune screen cracking for no apparent reason, after being left charging overnight. Our tipster's friend conjectures that the lithium ion battery -- which resides right behind the top half of the Zune's screen -- is expanding from overheating and putting too much pressure on the screen, causing it to crack. Unfortunately, Microsoft currently regards the issue as outside warranty coverage, leaving the victims with a broken Zune and nowhere to turn. Of course, this could all be off the mark, and it might turn out that a few Zune-droppers conveniently made up the same story to try and get a free repair, but if there is such a battery-expanding problem, we'd sure like to hear about it -- any of y'alls experiencing screen crackage of a similar nature?

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Canon announces new iVIS DVD camcorders

Canon may not have been able to keep its new HV20 HD camcorder under wraps, but it seems to have fared better with its announcement of this new pair of DVD camcorders in its iVIS line, revealing details on them on its own terms. The iVIS DC50 looks to be the more capable of the two, with a 5 megapixel CCD, 10x optical zoom, 2.7-inch widescreen LCD, and a miniSD slot, although it appears to be for still pictures only. The iVIS DC200 takes things down a notch to a 680,000 pixel CCD, but increases the optical zoom to 35x, with the camcorder packing the same 2.7-inch widescreen display and still picture-only miniSD slot. Look for both to hit Japan sometime next month, with the DC50 expected to come in around 100,000 Yen ($830) and the DC200 running about 60,000 Yen ($500).

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Nikon has new CCD malfunction problems

The Great CCD Failure of 2005 doesn't look like it's going to be Nikon's last. The camera manufacturer has just discovered a similar flaw in its Coolpix 5400, 5000, 4500 and 3500 shooters, and surprise, surprise, the manufacturing flaw is from the very same CCD manufacturer to blame for the last debacle. The official blame is on "CCD soldering degradation caused by aging" which means moisture and heat slowly wears down the CCD and kills the camera in its prime. Nikon got advanced warning of the problem by noticing an increase of malfunctions in a particularly hot and humid area in summer 2006. After some voluntary tests, Nikon noticed the CCD problem had reemerged, and is offering up free CCD replacements for victims -- like last time you might be seeing abnormal colors, distorted images or even no images. No word on how exactly to go about that, but we suppose Nikon isn't too terribly hard to track down.

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SimpleTech announces "world's thinnest" 2.5-inch 64GB SSD

World's thinnest titles aren't just for cellphones and DAPs, don't you know, Solid State Drives need to shave those millimeters just as much as the next guy, and SimpleTech seems up to the task with its new 64 gigger. The 2.5-inch drive, a member of SimpleTech's Zeus SSD lineup, measures a mere 9.5mm thick (0.37-inches), compared to some competing solutions more than twice as thick, making it a solid option for squeezing into those ever-slimmer laptops. SimpleTech is currently targeting the device at high performance applications such as military, intelligence and aviation, and has apparently buffeted the drive against shock, humidity, vibration and altitude -- most of the stability naturally thanks to the flash technology, of course. No word price, but with those kind of customers, we're guessing this one won't be cheap.

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Artimi's WUSB camera may be in 2008

Artimi, a fabless semiconductor company, has been working on wireless USB for cameras for the past while, and finally got to show off some of its prototypes at this year's CES. The deets were slim, however, and they've finally come clean with some more specs for our prying eyes. Of course, WUSB is no mystery. 480MB/s up to 10-feet, 110MB/s up to 30-ish-feet, along with the prestige of being the new "it" wireless standard for peripherals. Artimi is taking all that good bandwidth loving to the camera, and is teaming up with "several brand name camera vendors" to do it, the names of which it will announce in Q2. It'll cost manufacturers about $25 to add WUSB at the outset, but within 3 years that figure should be down to $10, and Artimi figures all but the cheapest cameras will have it by then. We might see a WUSB cam get launched in '07, but most likely we'll have to wait for '08 to roll around before this becomes a reality. Artimi also expects WUSB dongles to be fairly common by then, but the first-to-market products will most likely include a dongle just in case. As to battery life, these kids aren't too concerned, 'cause WUSB can toss 1GB of pics in about 30 seconds, so the chip doesn't need to be on for too long.

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