AVCHD

More letter stew. CamcorderInfo is abuzz about the new HD recording format called AVCHD, which records to BluRay discs with Mpeg4 H.264 compression, a compression spec that's been growing popular on the web. Sony and Panasonic got together (colluded?) on this, which is nice to see. Of course, as nice as H.264 stuff looks, it still highly compressed -- I think filmmakers are more excited about the raw recording possible with Panasonic's HVX200.

I've been very pessimistic about Blu-ray, Sony's HiDef DVD format. It might be a great technology, but since anyone who has learned any cool details about it had to sign non-disclosure agreements, there have only been negative things reported in the press. Problems with it -- manufacturing? or are they still working on all the specs? -- have delayed the PS3, which will come equipped with it. Meanwhile, Microsoft didn't wait to launch the Xbox, but next month you can buy a cheap attachment to it that plays HDDVDs (the VHS to Blu-ray's Betamax). That future is now. The Blu-ray future never seems to arrive.