When shooting your own video, nothing looks better than HD, but nothing matches the convenience of recording to disc (just pop out and play). Giving you the best of both home-video worlds (pretty much) is Canon's HR10 cam, which captures HD footage and records it to DVD, just like certain cameras from Sony and Panasonic. Yep, that's DVD, not Blu-ray or HD DVD. By compressing the material in a format called Advanced Video Codec High Definition (AVCHD), the HR10 can cram video with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels onto 3-inch discs. The downside is the discs will play in only certain players (including most Blu-ray machines) and PCs.

There are other perks, though: The HR10 can give it more a film look with the Cine Mode, which switches the frame rate to film's 24 frames per second. There's also an HDMI output for connection to an HDTV. Coming in August, the HR10 will cost $1,199 — not bad, though I'd almost expect full-on Blu-ray recording at that price.

More pics of the HR10 after the jump. — Peter Pachal

Canon, via Engadget