JVC's GZ-HM400 camcorder reaches US shores
updated 11:20 am EDT, Mon September 14, 2009
JVC Everio HM400 in US
JVC today brought over an Americanized version of one of its more advanced flash-based camcorders. The Everio GZ-HM400 is an upgraded version of the earlier X900 with a barrel-shaped body, a sharper 10-megapixel sensor and an improved 10X optical zoom lens. It can shoot 1080i video at the full 24Mbps bitrate of AVCHD (H.264) and brings familiar special features like 600FPS slow-motion shooting and 9-megapixel still shots.
The camera has slightly more advanced controls than the usual with aperture and shutter priority modes, but it similarly caters to newcomers with face detection and a near-automatic USB video transfer mode that can send videos directly to a user's iTunes library or to YouTube. About 32GB of internal memory gives the camera just under three hours of recording at full quality, and a microSDHC slot lets users nearly double this with a 32GB add-in card.
JVC ships the HM400 today for $1,000.
