On January 27th Panasonic and Sony unveiled a new high-def video format that may put a stake in the venerable camcorder’s silicon heart. Called AVCHD Lite, this subset codec of the AVCHD format found in today’s top camcorders (Canon HG21 and Sony SR12), is geared for digital cameras; the first ones arrive in April from Panasonic. Given that Sony is planning a big press conference at the upcoming Photo Marketing Association convention March 2nd, we’d safely bet they’ll unveil AVCHD Lite cameras too.
