There is a review of the Sony HDR-SR1 in machine-translated Japanese at:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dwatch%2Bimpress%2Bavwatch%26num%3D50%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26rls%3DGGGL,GGGL:2 006-17,GGGL:en
The poor translation makes it hard to understand, some of the links don't work, but I hope someone else can make more sense of it than I did.

Thanks for the link Peter. Some good samples on there.

"Being equal to HC3 as a picture quality, is not something which exceeds that, but because function has been settled cleanly with new GUI, the using selfishness when photographing has improved."

I love these translations.

Comparing their SR1 flower shot to their HV10 flower shot... man the HV10 looks light years ahead. I can't wait to get some more sample shots of the HV10 and the SR1 to compare. These are the two cameras that I'm really looking at.

FYI - The only app on either Mac or PC I could get to play the native files was Nero Showtime, though it won't play them in real time for me on my 2.8 P4.

As much as i hate saying it...I'd avoid AVC HD for the time being if you're doing anything more than soccer-mom stuff. I've got a lot of experience with the UX1 and the SR1 is essentially the same cam. not bad at all in terms of picture quality straight up, but the codec is a bear, decoding is ugly, and likely will be for some time to come.

If you want the original Japanese version, here it is:

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20060920/zooma273.htm

What is about the price of the Panasonic AVCHD cam ?

Thanks.

As much as i hate saying it...I'd avoid AVC HD for the time being if you're doing anything more than soccer-mom stuff. I've got a lot of experience with the UX1 and the SR1 is essentially the same cam. not bad at all in terms of picture quality straight up, but the codec is a bear, decoding is ugly, and likely will be for some time to come.

DSE

Thanks for this comment on editing AVCHD. For now, I'll look elsewhere for a small HD camera.

Regards
JohnG

I have to agree with DSE. AVCHD is not designed for multi-generation work and if you try to convert it to anything else or do multi generation edits it falls apart very very quickly.

Has some one tried to convert AVCHD to Cineform AVI format , so that multi gen edit would not fallapart ?

When will Cineform support this format ??

What is the SR1 like at the SD max rate? As a fixed camera to fall back on occationally it looks like it may be useful. No need to worry about running out of tape time etc and fast transfer to PC for editing into program. If its only for a few short shots even AVCHD may be OK. I can see as the main camera it may be a problem but to back up one of the HDV cams it may do just fine. I am certainly going to look at it to back up my FX1 for theatre shoots where it will not be used a lot just in case one of the other three main cameras miss something!!

Ron Evans