Camcorderinfo.com has a review/info on Sony's lower priced HD Camcorder. Check it out.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-to-Announce-Lower-Priced-HDV-Camcorder-HDR-HC3.htm

Looking at the screengrabs of the menu , it's virtually the same menu as the dcr-hc90 and despite some opinions , I love the touchscreen menu . It's a very quick scroll screen with any one feature available in seconds and has menu hierchy to move often used items to the entry screen. I'm alittle disappointed as to its' size - I was hoping for smaller . Last week I saw an Hc1 for the first time and maybe this will be even smaller. I read some posts that this size camera will have NO professional uses. Blah, Blah, Blah. An Hdv palmcorder is sooo cool. Kurth

The LCD screen is almost twice the resolution of the HC1's! That's gonna really help with focusing. I still hate that proprietary hot shoe. Why would SONY make a proprietary hot shoe and still have crappy accessories? Did they buy a whole ton of cheap condensor mic capsules they have to get rid of? Most of their microphones sound worse than the built in mic. In fact, I don't think I've heard of anyone liking SONY mics.

Isn't it wonderful the way Sony differentiates its products by doing things like leaving a 5-cent external mike input off this model, so that someone who needs one has to pay X $hundred for the next model up.

And yes, having owned an Sony external mike I can confirm that they are often quite horrid.

Has anybody considered modifying a standard hot-shoe splitter, i.e., a "Y"-shaped splitter, which would allow mounting of both, say, a 40 watt video light as well as a non-Sony condenser shotgun microphone onto a Sony HDR-HC1 (or HC-3) hot-shoe?

The base of the "Y"-shaped splitter would either be "ground-down" to fit into the Sony proprietary shoe or else, possibly, a smaller " Sony-proprietary-sized" base, i.e., a piece of metal, let's say, is attached (via strong epoxy?) to the base of the standard y-splitter to "down-size" it.

(I have seen the Y-shaped standard shoe splitter at my local camera store...)

Does this even sound plausible??

Open to any possible work-arounds...and hoping for a Non-Sony "Shoe-In"!!

THANKS!!

--Reilly