April 2 - 10:35pm EDT   Sanyo on Thursday said it had started shipping its combination photo and video Dual Camera Xacti line. The series is headlined by the FH1 and HD2000, which can both shoot 1080p video in H.264 while capturing 8-megapixel photos, carry 10X lenses, and both slow motion video as well as burst photo modes that take advantage of large memory buffers. The CA9 and WH1 (pictured) capture movies in 720p but are waterproof and snap 9-megapixel still shots, while the CG10 and TH1 have the same video resolution but 8-megapixel stills and either an extra-small (CG10) or horizontal (TH1) form factor. [full story]

January 21 - 1:45pm EST   Quickly following up on its Japanese plans, Sanyo this afternoon has already detailed the US plans for its 2009 Xacti camcorders. The FH1 (pictured) is the American rebranding of the FH11 and is one of the first conventional-layout Sanyo camcorders as well as one of the first 1080p60 cameras from the company, recording H.264 video to 8GB of internal memory or SDHC cards; it carries a 10X zoom lens and shoots still photos up to 8 megapixels. [full story]

January 21 - 8:40am EST   Sanyo today gave an early look at its camcorders for the year with a slew of new updates in Japan, all of which are HD models. The FH11 is one of Sanyo's first horizontal camcorders in recent memory and captures its 1080p video either to 8GB of internal memory or to Class 6 SDHC cards. It now supports the full 24Mbps bitrate and 60 frames per second of the H.264 codec. This and the vertically-oriented but SDHC-only HD2000 also shoot still photos at 8 megapixels [full story]

September 3 - 9:00am EDT   Sanyo this morning upgraded its Xacti camcorders with the North American version of the E2. This second generation of the company's hardened camera improves the recording performance and will capture 640x480 H.264 video at up to 60 frames per second and snaps up to eight-megapixel still shots, including at up to five continuous frames per second. It also brings live face detection and a specialized underwater mode that adjusts the colors to avoid some of the tinting that occurs in pool or shallow dives. [full story]

July 30 - 8:10am EDT   Sanyo held an event Wednesday for the Japanese launch of the Xacti HD800, a major upgrade to last year's HD700. It still shoots 720p widescreen video in H.264 but has a much improved eight-megapixel CMOS sensor that picks up 70 percent more visual data, improving the perceived sharpness at the same resolution. Color accuracy has also been stepped up, while the HD800 is the first Xacti camera of any kind to have 3D noise reduction that cleans the image in real time. [full story]

March 19 - 8:05am EDT   Sanyo this morning boosted the Xacti camcorder line with the CG9. The pocket camcorder records video at standard definition but includes one of Sanyo's sharpest-ever CMOS sensors, allowing it to record native still shots at 9.1 megapixels. Enhanced processing also lets it capture short bursts at five frames per second. For its primary movie mode, the CG9 records using AVC (H.264) and can fit about an hour of high-quality footage for every 1GB of memory on an SD card; SDHC support allows this newest Xacti to hold at least 32GB of storage with the right cards. [full story]