Converter for AVCHD announced by Canopus
 

It is not clear from machine translated reports whether this is software, hardware or both, but my impression is that it is both. The price in Yen appears to be about $600, available on December 22 (in Japan?). Someone who reads Japanese could clarify all this.

There is a brief report in English at: http://www.akihabaranews.com/news_details.php?id=12962

Looks like it converts AVC-HD data into Canopus HQ data. Sort of like the Cineform workflow for HDV.